A new class-action lawsuit takes aim at real estate agents and their 6% fee
I&#x27;m a software engineer, and I started my career at a well known mortgage company in Detroit. Views are my own, BTW.<p>I bought a house a couple years after I started working there, and I wanted the full home-purchaser experience. I used my company&#x27;s services for everything, and as an employee they hooked me up with a real estate agent (among other things).<p>I was honestly appalled at what little my real estate agent did for me through the whole process. I had what seemed like simple requirements: I wanted to live west of the city, I wanted at least 1 acre, and an outbuilding. The outbuilding is what threw off the search tool the agent was using to find houses for me; he rarely found good ones in my price range that had outbuildings.<p>I ended up finding the house I purchased. I&#x27;m honestly not sure what he did at all.<p>When it came time to sell my house, I did it by owner. It was super easy to do everything, including getting my home on the MLS with a service called Reozom, for a couple hundred bucks. I used several sources to come up with comps for pricing.<p>However, the purchasing agent who represented the buyers of my home was an absolute MONSTER to me; extremely rude in nearly every email or phone call. I think she was so horrible because I was proving how absolutely unnecessary she was in the whole process. I sold the house for a little under asking price, plus I paid her a 2% commission instead of 3%, and of course not 6% as if she represented me as well. The funny thing- she didn&#x27;t notice the 2% in the purchasing contract until after it was already signed.<p>What I&#x27;ve anecdotally learned is this: real estate agents don&#x27;t provide enough useful benefit for me to use them, and can be hostile as their industry is increasingly proven to be built on little or nothing.