New York City Council Votes to End Broker Fees Squeezing Renters

Based. Why the fuck do you deserve $10,000 for unlocking the door to an apartment I found myself?

Same thing could said of real estate agents

Our real estate agent more than earned her commission when we bought in 2021. There was zero chance we'd have landed a house that year without her help, and landing when we did got us a record-low mortgage rate that has more than covered the commission already.

> There was zero chance we'd have landed a house that year without her help,

These situations are created and maintained by real estate agents because they want to keep themselves useful.

There's no reason we can't get a push notification to our phone when a house matching our criteria gets listed locally. Open app, check it out, decide to move on it or pass.

The only reason real estate agents are helpful is because they've created their own system that they control.

I'm not talking about her helping us to show up at a house—yes, we could have done that ourselves—I'm talking about how she helped us as first time home buyers to navigate the most intense housing market in decades and craft a persuasive offer that actually beat out multiple cash offers without losing us tons of money. We got the first house we made an offer on at a time when most young people in our shoes were despairing at ever getting a home.

That situation wasn't created by real estate agents, it was created by sub-inflation mortgage interest rates, and she solved it by deeply understanding what a home seller wants out of an offer. That's what a real estate agent is good for, and it's what I hope a larger percentage of agents are going to be good at now that the bad ones can't hide behind their monopoly.