[redpoint5]

Mostly I don't understand why we have realtors anymore. They used to serve a useful function before the internet because they kept track of what properties were for sale and had networks to match buyers and sellers interests.

Besides being trusted with the house key, what else do they do that couldn't be scripted into a form that's hosted online? Drives me crazy when you walk into a kitchen and they say "and here's the kitchen...". Probably the one area that buyers need the most help with is understanding the differences between methods of heating/cooling a space or other efficiency related considerations, and that's among the weakest areas of knowledge for most realtors.

The thing that's really annoying is having a question that the owner needs to answer, so you play telephone by asking the question to the buyers agent, the buyers agent passing the question along to the sellers agent, and the sellers agent passing it on to the owner. Then the response goes back through that chain which is prone to translation errors at each step.

The 6% selling fee needs to go away and transition to something like a 1% fee, with most everything being handled by online databases. Someone will still need to be trusted with the house key, but I suppose that could be the seller in most cases. Never quite understood why the 2 parties usually don't meet except that it protects the 6% selling fee.