After making easy money for more than 10 years,

karma

Yeah. I wish I could say that the worst of them got washed out in the recent downturn, but far from it. Met some doozies on Sunday, including one trying to convince me that a 1-bedroom apartment could become a "legal" 2-bedroom if only you were willing to leave the apartment, go up the public stairway, and enter through a separate door on another floor. And after all that there was hardly enough room for a full-sized bed in either "room" much less a dresser.

Legal, maybe, but certainly not practical. Then the guy sneered at me when I told him my price range and said that such listings didn't exist, and I'd better buy this apartment because prices were set to take off. There are good brokers - but they are not the norm.

About time some of them finally started to earn their keep. I'm looking for a broker who will do laundry and polish wood floors. Any recommendations ?

I find the whole article interesting. And while i agree there are some good brokers out there, for years they were earning the easy money. I remember when i sold my apartment in 2004, not one broker was offering ways on how they would put to work their potential commission it was all about how i could spend money to make their job easier.

I think that if you feel someone's apartment is staged wrong, needs some paint, etc, to sell, then maybe out of the commission should be the broker actually spending towards earning.

I am not saying that they do nothing, just not enough to earn 6% or a split 3%. Sure they will argue they help guide through the system, make sure there are no errors, etc. But hell i wish i got paid on that sort of scale. There is just no way especially on the higher priced apartments that they should be making that sort of money.

I would have hoped the downturn would have made them realize that it is time to start working together and making the process a little less costly. One day there will be enough force out there to make them either irrelevant or brought down to a level that is more in line with the work they are doing. 6% does not fall into the reasonable category for the amount of work the do and the time actually spent.

6% is outrageous.

It's usually 1.5% to an individual broker who works with a brokerage ... but on high NYC sales prices, it's still outrageous.

No argument, Mikev. Part of the problem is that so many of them are really terrible guides to the system. A few will point out major flaws or suggest ways to make them less of a problem or help unimaginitive buyers look past fixable ones, but the majority seem to think that showing up on time to an open house is a major hassle.

I think the article would have been much better if the writer had tracked down the clients and gotten their side of each story. For example, why did those out-of-town businessmen "fire" their broker? Why not just continue to use her as a free car service?

Here's a NYtimes blog related to the article:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/the-dirty-work-of-being-a-broker/?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fnyregion%2Findex.jsonp

When you read the comments at the bottom of the blog, you can tell that the Real estate industry is really a hated industry, probably as much as the banking industry...

So the hate of the broker is not only a street easy thing....

I have absolutely no sympathy for brokers....in my opinion they are in the same category as Used Car Salesmen....

I recently made an offer on an apartment which was 11% less than asking and the broker told me I wasn't serious about purchasing the apartment and that I should come back with an offer closer to asking!!!!

Needless to say, I didn't come back at all..

i think as a buyer especially for new developments which you can go through the developer sales office, there is no need for a broker....However, as a seller, I think having a broker is useful..Selling a property as FSBO seems like a daunting task....Nonetheless i agree that there 6% commission is way way too high...4% and less seems more reasonable to me..would others agree with me?

Coffee's for closers.

Without painting with too broad a brush -beyond the ridiculousness of the commission, I am always amazed how little a broker knows about the unit they are trying to sell. Examples: pied a terres allowed? - don't know. Storage? If so, how much? Don't know. Sublets allowed? Not sure. It seems as if brokers allowed the hysteria do the selling for them. No homework. No research. Well, it is over.

Flmaoz. Most borkers do not realize they took an 80% pay cut.

w67 borker?

sjtmd you bring up a good point. An apartment i was looking at, not only did the broker show up 5 minutes late for an hour long open house, the sellers were still home because they miscommuunicated and had to rush out. But then i started asking questions of the broker and kept getting the I will need to look into that.

I truly believe that the real estate broker industry is just one big boiler room situation. In the hey day of the market anyone could pick up a phone and tell soemone to buy stock A and get a gigantic commission for doing nothing. Well the same applies here. At the end of the day the apartments do not sell because of a broker they sell because of an individuals tastes.

I am not saying that a broker can not help it along, but since they refuse to really put any of the money they are trying to earn back in the apartment they are putting it on the seller to make it more presentable. My wife was watching the home and garden channel and they had one of the shows on people trying to sell the house, sure not nyc, but same situation. House is sitting around because it is just a mess, so the show was someone came in to help out the seller to make the house over on the cheap but presentable. My point is why can't a broker do this as a service against their commission.

They are going to tell you their time is what you are paying for but as i calculated in another thread they make more then most people and it is not like they have a PhD in selling real estate.

My example is simple, take a $800,000 apartment at 6% is $48,000. If we say there is a co broke it is $24,000. Even if they spend 100 hours selling the apartment it is still $240 an hour which is outrageous and only gets worse the more expensive the property. Even the buyers broker makes a ridiculous amount, even if you spend 5 hours a week for 10 weeks helping someone look and then help wiht board package you are not spending that many hours. Also considering a lot of brokers tell you to go to open houses on your own, what are they really doing for you.

I think the real issue is that in a lot of places homes are 100k or less, an expensive home is a few hundred thousand, so 6% after spending a lot of time helping, etc does not seem like much. But in NYC where things are just crazy expensive, that 6% is outrageous and they really do nothing for you.