commission structure

[DL Martin]

Dear Real Estate Agents/Brokers;

I am not a real estate professional.

I am from Cincinnati, Ohio, but I live in Southern California. This summer I will be selling my CA house and moving home to Cincinnati.

Assuming a 6% commission on a typical 200k Cincinnati suburb house, that would be $6k for the buying agent and $6k for the selling agent...I would call that reasonable.

June 1st, I will be placing my SoCal house on the market. I am guessing that the list price will be $1.1 mill, give or take.

My question is, am I expected to pay a listing agent $33,000 and the buying agent another $33,000?

Is the work performed by California agents 5x that of the work performed by Ohio agents ????

[Martin Zawarski]

Assist-To-Sell is a national real estate chain that does fixed listing commission. I do not know if they are in your area, but in my area they are typically frowned upon by other agents. Their pricing of commission policy is frowned upon. Yes realtors would rather show a 3% listing rather than a 2% no matter what price point. For 1%, do you really want to exclude a good number of buyers from seeing your house? I know it's only 1% of your price! but by reducing the commission from 3% to 2% you are reducing their income by 33%.