My house is getting ready for sale. I’ve also started looking at places to buy. The goal is to make both happen at the same time, and not be homeless in between.
For buying, Zillow and Realtor.com are fantastic. Put in the right filters, and you can see a map with everything that matches. I wish it existed for the three other times I bought property. Real estate agents are still doing business as usual, but I think it’s an industry that soon will be disrupted by technology.
As a remodeler, I always talked directly with clients. We negotiated prices and talked out the details. It worked well. A few bigger jobs had an architect involved, but they were not much different than subcontractors: another expert handling their part of the project.
Real estate is very different. Around here, there is a listing agent working for a 3% commission. They are supposed to look out for the seller’s interest. Then a separate buyer’s agent getting their own 3%. It’s more like a lawsuit than a sale.
Usually I try to look at properties with the listing agent, since they know more about the property and the seller. However there’s a fixer-upper Victorian in Waverly NY that had to be done via buyer’s agent. Questions take about a week. I ask the buyer’s agent, who asks the listing agent, who asks the seller. Then it comes back the chain. Often so garbled that it’s not even useful. Three people eager to make a sale, who might be lying.
Aside from the communication issues, those 3% cuts are big chunks of money. They fall from the sky and land on agents almost randomly. That creates all sorts of perverse incentives. It turns some people into assholes.
Last weekend I booked to see a different Waverly Victorian at 2 PM Sunday. The listing agent planned to be out of town, so someone else was going to show it. An agent called me Saturday night. I incorrectly assumed he was the replacement, even though he mentioned the wrong address. Rather than clarify, he got the appointment details from me and said he’d show it. Then he called the listing agent and booked for 1 PM. Then texted me to say the time had changed. He also did some web stalking: looked up my house in the tax rolls, prepared a detailed sale analysis, and spent most of the visit trying to sell me on having him list it. The scam fell apart when I got a call at 2:15 from the original agent, wondering why I didn’t show. Yuch.
Having agents involved doesn’t seem to add 6% of value to real estate selling. So, I’m going to try a FSBO (for sale by owner). I’ll probably have to pay a buyer’s agent. Zillow is very aggressive about pushing them. But maybe I can talk directly with buyers and, you know, figure something out. I’ve sold 2 properties out of 3 that way, and the sales went much more smoothly than the one with an agent.
This is kind of an experiment. I’ll handle the sale the way I think it should be done, and see what happens. There’s already a web page. House for sale in Ithaca NY. Pix, videos, lots of detail. For the next 2 or 3 weeks it will be a work in progress. The house is on Craigslist now. It will list on MLS and the realty sites when there are more photos and videos, probably via Houzeo.
There’s a little construction work still undone, but mostly what’s left is sorting and boxing 27 years of accumulation. Feels good to get everything into better order. There’s already a Home Depot bin full of assorted door and shelf hardware. Another with plumbing. Electrical will need two of them. One bin is nothing but hammers.
Meanwhile, I kinda won’t mind when technology disrupts the real estate biz.
Dennis Kolva
Programming Director
TurtleSoft.com
