Realtors Get a Blog

The National Association of Realtors has started a blog. The lead item today is headlined “The Cost of Selling without a REALTOR?: $31,800.” Pretty scary, huh? Here’s the lead: “Real estate professionals do more for sellers than make the transaction easier. They make them money. In fact, the average seller who uses a real estate professional makes 16 percent more on the sale of their home than do sellers who go it alone. That’s an average of $31,800 per home.” Unfortunately, there’s no supporting data. So it could be that a Realtor actually brings in, on average, $31,800 more per home sale. Or it could be that a few dozen, or few hundred, or few thousand Realtor-sold multimillion-dollar homes skews the average very high compared to FSBO’s, which tend to be cheaper. Or it could be a few dozen other factors.