If you're buying, it would be silly not to use a realtor since you don't get charged anything. However, having just bought a house, I kind of feel like I got what I paid for.
All our realtor basically did was hook us up to his MLS email service. We were the ones who scoured everything, we were the ones going to open houses, we were the ones who found the house we eventually bought. He never really checked in or offered any advice on neighborhoods/houses that wasn't stupidly obvious. When he showed us a house, he mostly stood there looking at his cell phone. The broker he recommended was completely incompetent, to the point where we almost lost the house...the only reason we didn't if finally tried someone else.
The selling agent was an even more useless boob. I don't know if it was just the agents we dealt with, but I would consider the service and value extremely low. Maybe they don't need to offer customer service in this market, but it sure would be nice. I can put up with some incompetence when Im buying, but as a seller, if I had to pay 20-30k (or whatever) for that level of service, I would not be a happy camper. By the end of the buying process, I feel like I knew 90% of what my realtor did....might as well take the realtor course for a few months, and go all the way.
Our real-estate lawyer (some sort of fish guy) on the other hand, was extremely professional!
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