Survey: Home Sellers Not Always Comfortable With Real Estate Agents

Mar 01, 2019

Home prices during September increased nationally by 3.5 percent from one year earlier and were also up by 0.4 percent from August

Homeowners who are ready to put their property on the market are not always ready to work with real estate agents to facilitate the sale, according to a new study released by Clever Real Estate.

The study, which polled 1,000 adults, found 45 percent of home sellers did not realize they are expected to pay the buyer’s agent commission, while only 35 percent knew the standard total commission fee was about six percent of their home’s final sale price. Roughly half of respondents said they would be willing to sell their home using an AI platform that finds potential buyers, with 37 percent believing that AI technology could outperform a human real estate agent.

Millennial home sellers were not impressed with real estate agents: 93 percent said they were less likely to use a real estate agent, and they were also twice as likely to say a real estate agent was unimportant or not important at all to the home selling process. Still, 50 percent of all respondents said they wouldn’t feel comfortable negotiating with buyers and 62 percent admitted that they would not feel comfortable finding and completing the necessary paperwork for closing on their own.

“The key takeaway is that many homeowners simply don’t understand all of the costs involved in selling a home,” said Tommy O'Shaughnessy, Research Analyst at Clever Real Estate. “Real estate agents should set realistic expectations at the outset in order to avoid nasty surprises and difficult conversations further down the line. This is especially true for first time home sellers, who were 53 percent more likely to believe home buyers pay commissions than experienced home sellers.”

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Phil Hall

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Mar 01, 2019

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