Don't overpay your Agent: First-time homeowners are most at risk of overpaying on their house.
For the record “are agents worth 6%?” is not what I want to talk about. There are clearly many many people who think the answer is no and working on solutions to change that. Many years and lots of money has been spent by some incredibly smart people trying to change the economics of real estate. Why? Because those people are just recounting their experiences, all of which included an agent. Point being, there is an incredibly strong social pressure to use an agent, since everyone else has — and you don’t want to be the sucker who tried to do it on your own, and got screwed out of $50,000 or $100,000 (or some other high $$ amount). Buying a house is the biggest financial transaction most of us will ever make, and people can experience both positive and negative outcomes for decades afterward. The most important factor that determines whether the purchase was a success is the value of the home. After all, whether the price was $100,000, or $1,000,000, paying too much for a property is ...