[wpietri]

Trulia and Zillow definitely provided a step forward. 15 years ago, the market was intentionally opaque. Local boards of realtors controlled the flow of information on available properties, making it very hard for people to buy property without giving a 6-7% commission to agents and brokers.

That doesn't mean the market can't get still more efficient, but having a nice presentation of public data is definitely worth appreciating.

I'd also add that real estate agents can provide substantial value. Many don't, of course. But buying a house is an enormously complicated transaction, with a lot of legal, financial, and material complexity. Buying a business is even more tricky. To me it's similar to having a lawyer: there are good ones and bad ones, and sometimes you might not need one at all. But they're not pure waste.

[henrikschroder]

> But buying a house is an enormously complicated transaction

Why?

Where I'm from, buying a home is a few pages at most. You need to put down the buyer, the seller, the object, the price, the down-payment and the date.

Same for getting a mortgage from a bank, it's a page of contract, and a page of terms and disclaimers. You need the buyer, the object, the mortgage amount, the date, and the type of mortgage.

(The trick, of course, is that where I'm from, the general proceedings of buying a home is regulated by law, so the only thing that needs to go on a contract is the specifics and deviations from the norm.)

[wpietri]

People's particular needs for housing are personal and detailed. Houses are complicated objects with complicated, unique financial, legal, and physical histories. It is the single largest financial transaction most people make. And the people involved are generally novices, which makes it yet more complicated.

I get that you'd like it to be simple, but it's coming across like this to me: http://xkcd.com/793/

[smackfu]

You don't have to do home inspections (and consequent repairs), radon testing, title searches, etc.? That's the junk that makes it complicated.

[henrikschroder]

> home inspections

House is sold as-is. Buyer is responsible for finding all visible issues. Seller is responsible for X years (3 I think?) for hidden issues. Done.

> radon testing

Buyer is responsible for testing. The city can tell you if a certain area is at-risk. Sellers usually provide long-term testing results. You can add a clause to the contract stipulating that if radon level is higher than X within Y years, cost of fixing is split between seller and buyer by Z.

> title searches

What is that? googles Oh. No, we have good public record-keeping, you don't need to pay third parties to trawl decentralized piles of unorganized records.

[joeframbach]

You come across as very naive here. "Seller is responsible for X years (3 I think?) for hidden issues." So, you need a method of determining if an issue was existing-but-unnoticed vs new-and-buyers-fault. How would you make that determination? With a home inspector whose word is good and whose work is thorough.

[timjahn]

I'm assuming you're not from the United States?

[joeframbach]

Either not from the United States, or doesn't know what they're talking about.