Commissions are always negotiable between the parties – ie, the seller and his agent, and the buyer and his agent.

The buyer is not a party to the listing contract.

I’ll go back to the Nordstrom selling socks analogy. This is not selling socks. You only need to sell once, and that one event isn’t likely to happen on the first day. That affects the decision.

One thing I don’t thing agents take into account enough is that selling is stressful. Anything that is likely to increase the duration of that stress is not likely to be appreciated. That means doing everything you can to shorten the process. The commission is just part of that. Pricing and condition of the property are other parts of the equation. But when you’re done with all the variables you want something reasonably likely to get acceptable results within a reasonable period of time.

So why when the expectation was an offer within 30 days, and often more than one offer within a week, was the amount recommended not less?

The industry fails when it does not adjust due to strong market conditions, and yet holds market conditions to blame in a weaker market.

The amount recommended should be the lowest amount at which the seller will be successful at his objective. The agent for the seller should be adjusting their advices based on market conditions. Yet the concensus suggests that the % is an expectation regardless of price and or market conditions.

Let’s call $15,000 per the bogey and the lowest $6,000. Wouldn’t that place a cap at $24,000 for a balanced result? Why should it not have a cap the same as most agents demand a cap on total amounts paid to a broker? If there is no limit to what you can charge, then why is there a limit to what your broker can charge an agent in a year’s time? Where is the “practice what you preach” in that?

A minimum and a maximum. A higher % until you hit the minimum and a lower one past the minimum to the cap?

Whatever the logic beyond “You HAVE TO offer THIS”, the industry cannot expect the public to perceive them differently and well, if the chips always end up on the agent side of the table regardless of market conditions and price.

It’s OK to do that, but it’s not OK to then wonder why the public perceives us as it does.

As to lower priced properties, and why it’s not 1.5%, it’s because the others are mainly offering 3%. There’s a concept in pricing goods of prices being sticky downward, meaning they go up faster than they go down. This is slightly different than that, but with similar effect. As long as most people are offering X% to a buyer’s agent, it’s risky to offer less.

But this isn’t the type of market where you’d expect it to go down. That would be a hot market, where even a good percentage of FSBOs are successful. The slower the market, the more the risk in offering less.

If the expectation of agents was 1.5% for homes priced over a million dollars, then that is what Kary would recommend. Kary recommends what agents expect.

So why does the expectation of the whole never change whether it is a hot market or a slow market or a $250,000 condo or a $1.2M house?

Why does the expectation, and thus the amount needed for a seller to be successful, remain a constant for so many years regardless of home prices or market conditions?

Why can’t the expectation be 3% or $15,000 whichever is less, or some other formula that appears more reasonable?

Why does every seller in the Country, by and large, seem to be given the same advice that Kary is giving?

The buyer has options too, but those really should be options he discusses with his own agent. Anything else is problematic.

Back when we were looking for our own house last year, we didn’t generally make offers that reduced the SOC. That’s because we didn’t think it would necessarily help us. The difference is we’d get the SOC, where an ordinary buyer wouldn’t. For a buyer to be certain, they really need to go the rebate route.

The buyer chooses only with his purchase and sales agreement terms, ie, his offer, or his own negotiations with his buyers agent.