Why should anyone use a Realtor

[Demetrius Bradley]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to question this, but why should any buyer or seller use a realtor? I have been having this argument over the last 2 years because in my opinion (base on real facts) Realtors are the true cause of the housing bubble and crash. Realtors who claim they had 5-20 years experience misled sellers into believing their houses were worth 200-300% more then what they had original paid for them, thus lying to buyers telling them their offers were to low or telling buyers there's multiple offers on a property when a lot of times there wasn't just to get a higher commission.

I guess what im asking is if Realtors have all this so-call experience then how can they explain a house worth $100k today can be worth $300k in 18 months? Remember you are supposed to be the expert when a seller ask for your expert opinion on listing price, and when a buyer ask you whats a fair offer price.

And as of today 04-25-2010 you guys are still misleading buyers and sellers, here is a clip from the Las Vegas Review Journal about how Realtors are selling short sales.........

-Listing offices are starting to manipulate prices along the lines of foreclosures in the past year, which is to list properties well below current market value to get multiple offers and submit a viable offer to the lender, Nason said

The question is why? Whose interest are you servicing?You are suppose to be on the seller side or the buyer.side. You guys are creating once again a false market and if you don't realize that or believe that then you are in the wrong business.

On short sales Realtors should be 100% with the buyers! With all the inventory out there now Realtors should be on the buyers side 100% of the time.

[J Scott]

Originally posted by Demetrius Bradley:

...their only mistake was they didn't know enough about real estate and turned to a realtor.

Sorry, I don't buy this excuse. People need to take responsibility for their decisions and not just listen blindly to "experts". It no different than someone who comes into a lot of money and -- instead of learning about money management -- instead just goes to a financial planner and says, "Take care of this for me."

If you don't know anything about buying a home, don't buy one until you learn! Don't trust a so-called expert just because they have the title of "realtor" or "planner" or whatever.

You do realize that to become a real estate agent, you basically need a high school education, about 100 hours of training, and you have to pass a test where the questions are pre-determined, right?

If you are going to entrust the biggest financial decision of your life to someone with potentially that little knowledge, you get what you deserve. (Btw, I'm not saying all realtors are idiots, just that they *could be*)

explain how these property prices kept raising at that pace other then "well the house across the street was listed at $250k so that's what we based the average list price ", that's when I would expect the expert in the room to say "Mr. home buyer the asking price for this home is way over price for this market" instead of saying "you're getting a great deal and I would advised offering more than the asking price because there are100 offers on it" wink wink

There is no intrinsic way to determine the value of a piece of property. Property is worth nothing if you don't evaluate it relative to something else (like other property or the cost to build something like it).

The best way to determine the value of residential property is to look at what people paid for similar property, in a similar location, in the very recent past. That's what comps and appraisals are about, and that's what drives supply and demand in this industry.

So, for a realtor to say, "Five similar properties in this area just sold at $250K, but they weren't worth that much" is ridiculous.

If a bunch of similar properties in an area sell for a similar price at the same time, that's what they're worth! You may not like that, but it's the way things work from an economics standpoint.

Remember it was Realtors who told sellers that all they had to do was paint the walls. put stainless in the kitchen and cut the grass and the house would be worth $100k more!

Remember, it was the stupid buyers who believed them.

If people would have stopped believing everything they were told, and had done some research, they could have made their own decisions.

Whose fault is that?

...we all know the appraisals were whatever the listing price on the house was...

If that's the case, the appraisers weren't doing their jobs. That's certainly not the realtor's fault.

Granted bad decision on the homeowner, but how easy is it to turn down that much cash while being told your payments won't go up and many times it would be lower??

Sorry, I don't buy that argument either...

Do we free all the drug dealers using the rationale, "We can't blame the dealer...how easy is it to turn down thousands of dollars selling a product that basically sells itself!"

How can you say that someone is exempt from responsibility for their bad decisions because they were pursuing a get-rich-quick scheme. Sorry, that's no excuse for doing stupid stuff...

...it's always the same answer, "we wanted to live in this neighborhood and our Realtor told us we were getting a good deal and the bank assured us our payments would be x amount and not a penny more.

So, now you're blaming ARM loans. That's certainly different than blaming realtors!

I purchased my house a couple years ago, and it's lost about 20% in value in that time. Am I blaming anyone? No. I made a decision based upon my own knowledge.

In fact, I'm still thrilled with my decision...I'm living in the home I wanted, my payments haven't gone up (and never will), and worst-case I have to stay here for a while before I have enough equity to sell without bringing money to the table.

I knew that was a potential scenario when I purchased my house, and now I'm happy to live with it, without blaming anyone else...