[tverbeure]

Whenever we’ve bought a house, we told the agent to not bother sending us listings or set up viewings. We simply checked open houses on Redfin and Zillow ourselves, and if we liked a house, we’d ask the agent to prepare an offer, at a price we set. It is not to figure out what a house will sell for if there are enough other sales in that neighborhood.

For their reduced work, we’d ask a reduction of their commission.

[kube-system]

In the US, this will severely limit your options. Most houses are posted to MLS first, and don't make it to public sites until later. If you want to get the best deals, you gotta have an agent send you MLS listings daily, swoop in and make an offer on the first day before anyone else sees it.

When I bought my last house, my agent was able to send me dozens of listings from MLS for homes that weren't listed on public websites.

[tverbeure]

That was not our experience in California.

One of our agents would still send MLS postings to us. We usually got that email after we’d gotten the same email listing from Redfin. And not once was there an MLS listing that wasn’t listed on Redfin.

[poulsbohemian]

I'm curious about your location and whether your agent was engaged in pocket listings*. When I push new listings to the two MLSs I belong to, they syndicate to all the various sites almost instantaneously.

*Pocket listings are something more of the public should understand, as they are almost universally bad. Listing creates a market and gets your property in front of the most potential buyers.

[lostlogin]

Then this is why agents exist. That’s gate keeping to protect their patch.

[kube-system]

Definitely. But if you want to get a deal, for now, you have to play the game.

[dilyevsky]

You can pay a flat fee to put your house in mls without an agency - it’s couple hundred bucks

[kube-system]

Did you reply to the wrong comment? I am talking about buying a house.