To: Tradelite who wrote (15113 ) 11/15/2003 9:53:10 PM From: Doughboy Read Replies (1) | Respond to But your reasons for supporting your own chosen profession are specious and self-serving. Brokers save you from having stupid internet listings/ads? C'mon. Your example of an offensive pop-up ad is simply not the norm (and anyway, the example you cited came from the Realtor's own stupid site). The fact is that internet sites like eRealty and zipRealty do a great job, and they are clearly putting Realtor.com and Homestore out of business because they do it better. So what's the realtor's response? They're going to take their ball and go home. If it were a game, we'd call it childish; if it's a business, then we'd call it an attempt to monopolize. The realtors' raison d'etre, like many professional associations, is to keep competition out. As for your second reason that Realtors will provide you with security and safety, that's a joke. Are you saying that your agent protects you by being put in harm's way instead of you? As far as I can tell, most houses are on lockboxes these days anyway and the sellers agents only do showings/open houses to recruit new clients, not to sell their current client's property. As for security, realtors provide no better security than saying, "please put your valuables in a safe place." In a home that I sold a few years ago, I had a valuable painting damaged by a buyer who had the bright idea to try to look behind the painting and tipped it off the fireplace mantle. My agent, who was standing there and did nothing disclaimed any kind of responsibility for the damage done by the visitor, and so did the buyer's agent. I ended up paying the repairs myself. So where's the benefit? It's not like they're indemnifying for their own negligent conduct (or haven't you read the most recent standard agency agreement?). I for one have never said that realtors provide no benefit. They obviously do, and I would probably use one next time I sell a property. But I don't think there's any question that Realtors benefit from their artificial barriers to entry and have excessive profits. You can tell this is true because of a couple of things: (1) Even though the number of realtors goes up and agencies have consolidated into national entities, prices have not gone down. Realtors are pocketing the dollars from economies of scale because no viable competition has entered their market. (2) the 'profession' of being a realtor is really a sham. The tests or apprenticeships are nothing more than artificial ways to eliminate entry into the market. Unlike a lawyer or doctor, the skills necessary for being a realtor are no more than any other kind of salesperson. There is no educational minimum or ethical requirement. (3) In my opinion, realtors either implicitly or explicitly price fix. Each of the big realty agencies require realtors to charge the same fixed percentage and do not allow price competition among agents. Agents who break ranks are boycotted. (4) Realtors boycott FSBOs. This is just another form of an illegal boycott. Realtors have no economic reason for not showing FSBOs but they all come up with specious reasons, even though it is clearly not in the client's interest to ignore the FSBO. The real story is that boycotts by realtors discourage this form of competition. Now, I'll admit that these generalizations are not true in every case. There is some competition at the margins, and Realtors probably feel like their 'profession' is under competitive attack, but I think anyone who looks at this rationally would deem this an uncompetitive market.
