[jnicholasp]

The seller does not pay for the buyer to receive their agent's service, except in accounting terms. The commission to the agents is (should be; if you as the seller aren't thinking of it that way, you're misconceiving the situation) priced into the cost of the home. All the money in the deal comes from the buyers.

When realtors' business model gets disrupted, sellers will not end up getting the same prices for their houses as they do currently, or get to keep the 6% that now goes to agents - that money will simply drop out of the cost of buying homes (except for the new, smaller, cost that will be captured by the new business model).

[nordsieck]

"When realtors' business model gets disrupted, sellers will not end up getting the same prices for their houses as they do currently, or get to keep the 6% that now goes to agents"

It's not clear to me that that is true. All economics tells us is that in the current system, sales clear, which means that buyers are fine buying at the current prices and sellers are fine selling at the current prices less commission.

If the commission were to suddenly disappear, it is not clear if the buyer, the seller, or some mix would retain that money. You're suggesting that the buyer would retain all the money without evidence, whereas basic logic would suggest that the seller has more economic power (because housing prices generally appreciate faster than inflation), particularly in hot real estate markets.

[jnicholasp]

Your point is valid. It's not clear to me that my claim is true, either. I made it in part because I wondered whether it were true, and I subscribe to the idea that the best way to find out if something is true is not to ask whether it is, but to assert that it is and wait for arguments to the contrary.

But I think it might be partly true, too. As you said, currently "sellers are fine selling at the current prices less commission". When those commissions disappear, sellers who were previously content to get Price - 6%, should still be content to get Price*0.94, since those are the same, and at least in buyer's markets, competing sellers have an incentive to undercut one another in the effort to get their house sold. It seems probable that those would lead to houses moving to a new normal pricing structure 6 percentage points lower than the old normal (less whatever amount the new model is capturing).