Let’s start off by saying their is absolutely no such thing as a “standard”  real estate listing commission.  By no means does this blog post even hint there is a specific price you should pay to list your home. With that being said if someone asked you “what do you think most brokers and agents charge to sell a home?” almost everyone would come up with the same number. There are legal reasons why we won’t be saying that number in this post. A little known fact by most of the consumers is that number is negotiable. Here at Orson Hill Realty the policy is to negotiate a price low enough to make the seller happy and the agent can still cover marketing costs and be able to eat. 

Being a real estate agent is not a cheap business. There is a ton of overhead from personal marketing material as well as property specific marketing material. It is true we are in a sellers market still but the tide is shifting. When that happens it will cost more to market a home. A listing agent will not be able to just put the home on the MLS and go about their day. It is also more expensive to market higher end homes and they typically sit on the market much longer.

Another thing the consumer doesn’t really understand is that an agent must deal with a bunch of people that never sell or buy a home with that agent. That cost must be figured into the cost of doing business. That agent may deal with 50 people before that one person generates revenue for that agent. So the person they actually make money off of is paying for the people that never end up closing a deal. That may sound rough but that is the way the business works. So an agent that works 10-12 hours a day 7 days a week (like me) may only close 2 deals a month (still not bad at our pricepoint in the Foothills). Those two properties are covering the cost and time the agent spends on people that don’t close a deal.

Back to the fact that agents and real estate companies need to re-evaluate their commission structure, their is no shortage of what is referred to in the business as “discount brokerages“. These are companies that usually charge a flat fee or low fee to sell a home. There is nothing wrong with this business model. However there are times I hear from clients that XYZ Real Estate Company is promising to list their home for less than what a professional photographer costs. That is confusing to me. Not sure how XYZ Real Estate can properly market the home and spend time on the fiduciary responsibility they have for their clients. 

With that being said Orson Hill Realty will work and negotiate a price to list a home with the seller. We will make it fair for both parties. We will assure your home is marketed with our state of the art technology we use. Even in a sellers market a seller needs to have the market exposure to get more bodies through the home to assure the home gets true market value.