From: pjh@mccc.edu (Pete Holsberg)
Subject: Re: REALTORS ARE WORTH EVERY PENNY AND MORE
Organization: The College On The Other Side Of Route One
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 22:30:50 GMT

In article <22848@drutx.ATT.COM> drb@druhi.ATT.COM (BurrittD) writes:
=Actually it was two experiments. The first one was selling the
=townhouse without a realtor. The second one was buying a house without
=a realtor and saving and additional 3 percent. You may be right in your
=statement that is was a rare event. The point I was trying to make
=was that realtors only want to list your property if they can sell
=it with out doing much work. The one's I talked to were not willing
=to spend any effort trying to sell it (for 6.5% I do not think
=it is unreasonable for them to spend some effort, do you?) 

It depends. You may indeed be correct in saying that the REs you spoke
with are less than competent. Very few REs will turn down a listing if
they think it has any chance at all of selling.

=I also have numerous other stories on how realtors tried to manipulate
=me (and people I know). But then again those would not be controlled
=experiments. By the way, WHAT IS A CONTROLLED EXPERIMENT WHEN IT COMES
=TO REAL-ESTATE AGENTS???? The only way I can think of doing one is
=to have 1 property be sold by 100 realators and then sold by 100
=owners. All of this would have to be done on the same propoerty
=at the same point in time. Pete, how could this be done?????

I doubt that such an experiment could be done. I used hyperbole to point
out the folly of damning the majority of REs from anecdotal evidence of
only a few hundred cases. Do you have any idea as to the number of real
estate transactions that occur each day?

=> And then he extrapolates his "data" to the entire USA (or perhaps even
=> th world)!
=> 
=Chill out Pete, all I am doing is trying to help other people on the net
=and give them some ideas on how they may be able to save themselves a 
=few bucks. What are you afraid of, people trying to do it on their own
=and succeeding???

Huh? You didn't seem to be doing that. I recall that you said something
like "it seems that there are some good REs but they aren't in the
majority." How does that help people?

I'm not afraid of people selling their own houses, but I am not happy
with off-the-cuff "conclusions" in an area where the speaker has very
little data to go on.

=Sounds to me like you are a part time (full time??) realtor or have someone
=who is very close to you that is.

My wife is an RE. Before she became one about 18 months ago, I probably
would have agreed with you. "Common knowledge" and all that. But now
that I get an inside look at a large local agency, my ideas about REs
have changed.

There are -- as there are in any field -- some practitioners whose
ethics are not those that you or I would be comfortable with, but -- in
what I personally have seen or heard of directly from my wife -- they
are definitely in the minority.

=
=> Atta boy, Dave.
=
=Thank you

Come, come. Don't tell me you missed the sarcasm in the "atta boy"? That
wasn't nice of me, so I will apologize for it.

I don't have a problem with your relating your experiences here, but
please try to be more careful about creating conclusions from such
small samples.