Average realtor's fee

[firebird]

We are meeting with a realtor to put a house on the market. What is the average fee these days? I know that it used to be around 6 % and that you can negotiate. I'm just curious how much I can negotiate. The house is a single family in the Boston area. We had thought about selling it our selves but have now decided against that.

[blondetwin22001]

We just put our house on the market last week and our realtor is charging 6% and the amount was NOT negotiable. He made that very clear to us. :rolleyes: In Missouri, I think 6 and 7% are pretty much the going rate. Good luck with selling your house!

[TLynn]

6% here in PA.

[mindy75]

Here it's a standard 6%. I've heard of cases where the realtors have agreed to split 4/5%. In those cases, the listing agent was somehow related to the seller. Around here, the buyers and sellers agents split the 6%. So you'd have to get 2 agents to agree to accept a lower percentage.

[savannahgrl]

For us it was 6% and not negotiable.

[IrishEyes]

6% is pretty standard.

I think there are agencies that charge 1.75%, one around here is called Advance Realty. Then, there's Zip Realty, where they give you a refund of 20% of the commission after the sale of your house.

[cgmom313]

6% is standard.

Because of the slow market when we sold our house in FL we changed it to 6.5%. 3% for our agent and 3.5 % for the buyers agent. That is a little incentive to agents to put our house at the top of the pile. Our house was on the market for 5 or so months we changed the percentage and sold our house 2 weeks later. Not sure if that is the reason but it seemed to work.

Good Luck!!! Hopefully the market will be better this spring

[mia's mama]

6% here in CA as well.

[Rose]

Now that the market is slow I don't think a lot agents are negotiating anymore. Also the Broker has to agree so the Realtor can't just agree to anything.

[hmbay]

Now that the market is slow I don't think a lot agents are negotiating anymore. Also the Broker has to agree so the Realtor can't just agree to anything.

ITA. DH's old brokerage it was 6 or 7 and your broker had to agree to 6. He currently works for an agency that allows him to set any commission he wants (down to 0%). The lowest he will go is 4% if he's doing both a buy and sell for a client. Most agents here expect they will get 2.7%-3.5% out of a sale if they are representing the buyer so it's abnormal to see less than 4% around here because the listing agent wants some sort of commission after they pay out the 2.7-3.5% and pay their broker their cut of their comission.

[mamax2]

In my area, 5-6% is typical for residential properties. The lower end is more common for more expensive homes - like those in the $600K+ range.

Real estate commission is ALWAYS negotiable, as in there can't be price fixing, but of course a broker can refuse to accept a low rate and therefore not work with you. In this market, I'd hesitate to try and negotiate much on the commission simply because your Realtor is looking at possibly a long listing time with a lot of advertising expenses and marketing fees. S/he is already spending more to market your property so it's not really prudent to take a hit on the commission. Of course, if you're also willing to negotiate the level of services that Realtor may be providing, that might give you a leg to stand on when asking him/her to accept less $$.

[Tanya]

We've sold 2 houses with Assist2Sell (http://www.assist2sell.com), and had no problems both times. The first time we sold, it was 1.5% to the selling agent and 3% to the buyer's agent (if they would have brought the buyer, it would have been a fixed price of only $3k). The second time, they had fixed prices on their end depending on the selling price and 3% to the buyer's agent, but it worked out to a similar percentage. Saved us a ton of money on our last house as we just needed someone to list it on MLS and have some realtor connections to sell it. We'd already done the professional appraisal, so we knew exactly how much we wanted. Our realtor wasn't the greatest (he was kind of an airhead;)), but it was worth it to save money. He got it sold in 2 weeks, so he did something right.

[Brady]

Interesting. We paid 4% to our Realtor last year, we sold North of Boston.

ETA- I did just notice another response, and this was a buy and sell from the same realtor.

[firebird]

Thanks for all the replies. MY DH has a business relationship with the realtor we chose, he's a contractor and has done a few jobs for her. We signed a contract today for 5%.

[udsweetpea]

6% in Delaware, but I've seen it range from 5-6%.