How many of them know SE?

I would think most working brokers are familiar with SE (meaning they have checked it out); whenever I've gone to open houses, most of the traffic comes from Streeteasy, the NYtimes or the brokerage firm website. Wouldn't you be curious to know where about a third of your traffic comes from?
Some brokers clearly have a negative reaction to Streeteasy, so you know they've read some of the comments here.

95%,95% with a +/- 5%. I think most brokers would know about SE by 2 years ago, but you have to account for some clueless people and some old school cats.

Did you just find SE or something?

I found brokers to be put off by the amount of information I seemed to have thanks to SE. It has been a closed society here for so long some of the old guard are clearly threatened by the fact that they are no longer in control of the data. Rightfully so, their value has been substantially diminished.

Ahhhh, transparency.

the last thing brokers want to be is obsolete! can you imagine! that's why they do their best to only work with one another.

Agree with Spin's take. They usually make a point of telling me how unreliable the data on SE is, usually after I've asked them to verify something I found on SE, like a recent comp.

That is funny because i was also told that it was a bad comp. Well how is that possible because even if i did not see it on here, I could go into ACRIS and get the same info to see what a place sold for.

I do not know at this point what a broker does for me in terms of buying an apartment because negotiating is at least in my opinion, assuming you are comfortable doing this yourself, much easier when you are armed with prior recent sales in the building and the area. Plus to me it is nice to actually being involved and not getting information fourth hand. meaning you put an offer to your broker, who calls the sellers broker, who calls the sellers, so you have 3 people who have information prior to you and you have no idea what gets lost in translation.

You know things are bad when a broker tells you when you are going to buy a newly built condo that i should let him represent me because while he may not be able to do better then I can by myself, but it costs me nothing. funny i think it actually would have cost me some of what i got when they factored in having to pay a broker.

Mikev - So the question remains, how do we bridge that gap between a broker offering and a FSBO? I think the problem lies in the whole retail/wholesale argument. A FSBO seller will attempt to convince you that you are saving because you are "cutting out the middleman." I wish it were that simple because his whole motivation is maximizing his return. At the end you have to concede that there is no MSRP on real estate, therefore no easy way to determine market value, hence the need for the intelligent broker who by nature of the human brain is able to articulate the subtleties of the deal. But here's the rub: more and more people legitimately believe themselves to be more market savvy than the pro's. Cut back to 2007 and ask how much broker savvy benefitted buyers.

It's clearly a divide at the moment because I'm already on record as saying I won't touch a FSBO because, by nature of their action to go it alone, they are sticky on price. I have to believe that what the Burkhardt Group and KeithB and W81st are doing are cutting edge and addresses a lot of these issues. To that end W81st very likely to get the first call on my next deal.

Spin I am not going to argue over the fact that yes FSBO could be stickier on price. I know when i sold when i priced originally i actually threw in a slight discount based on the fact that i was not paying a broker. Funny enough when i added a broker we grossed it back up and i was getting offers at the higher price it basically said that a broker can convince people to pay anything, this was back at the end of 2004.

So really the way i feel is that armed with all the comparitives available today, a smart FSBO can price correctly, this only works of course if this person is also level headed and can understand the reality of pricing. A broker does not necessarily price better because they want their commission they will yield to the seller at least initially, which is why you see so many price drops on streeteasy.

I really believe that while some brokers do add value, there are many that do not.

The issue I feel that needs to be solved is how to get people to feel comfortable when a broker is not in between.

I think the issue isn't that the broker can add "value" in the show and tell as much as that the broker still has a huge advantage in that they have the sales leads (the buyers). This has always been the advantage of the middleman. And this has been the place where the internet has done the disintermediation between the buyer and seller, at least in some areas. To work, it generally requires that the buyer be savvy/educated in the product they are buying. This will never be the case for the whole population.

In a sense, the people who hang out on SE are akin to techno geeks who buy from a Newegg.com. They know the market, what they want, and are willing to forego handholding in order to buy directly at a lower price from a discount seller. In return, that seller has designed a retail format geared towards low advertising and low prices that attracts these customers.

RE probably doesn't yet have the scale of customers for that, but the new tools are making it possible for some brokers to find niches to provide different services at different prices a la Keith, Noah and West81st.

And yes, I think a lot of brokers resent the new transparency. The reason so many are so disliked was that too often you learned they told every person whatever they thought you wanted to hear to close the deal. They relied on your ignorance and so resent that that part of the game has changed.

I think that the model most likely will change as the younger generations start to look to buy. I can say as someone who is 36 and grew up with a computer and the internet that when i reached out to a broker to help me look they really added nothing to my search. what i mean by this is that everything in my price range was on streeteasy or on the nytimes website. then on top of that he told me to go to open houses on my own, but list him as being my agent. In this case he has earned nothing as if i found something i liked all he would be doing is negotiating on my behalf, well i did not need that.

on the selling side I still see why unfortunately you need them because most people are not yet comfortable going and working directly with a seller and since it costs the buyer nothing out of pocket there is no harm in using a broker, so the FSBO is left out in the cold most of the time.

I think the interesting question is what percent of buyers/renters are familiar with Streeteasy?

While I am generally anti-broker (though I would not be if they opened up the market a bit), not everyone knows how to negotiate or sell.

See the funny part is this is like buying a car. Everyone learns sooner or later to us edmonds and see what people are paying and even read the message boards there and people are actually telling you the deal they got. Well this is no different. I can see exactly what people are paying for a similar product and negotiate from there. And just like a car, at the end of the day you settle on the price you feel is fair and hopefully you are not the type of person to look back and say i wish i paid 500 less.

in case you're not aware of this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/realestate/03madison.html?scp=1&sq=madison%20wisconsin%20for%20sale%20by%20owner&st=cse

clearly a very different market than manhattan but where i thought SE was actually headed when i first stumbled upon it.