Sure, but what you are paying 1/2 for? Imagine owning a home which sells for $1,000,000. Currently you pay roughly 6% - $60,000. You pick Redfin - they charge take the money and give you back 1/2 but you are still paying them $30,000!!
But if your house is sold for $100,000 you'd pay $6,000 or $3,000 to Redfin. The whole thing is just the biggest currently running scam that I can think of and someone will come along and totally disrupt this entire industry of scammers :-)
Exactly. Does it take ten times as much work for a real estate agent to sell a $1m house versus a $100k house? Obviously not. So what are we paying ten times as much for in the one case, and if there's no connection between effort and fee, what are we paying for, and why, even in the low end case? Totally a scam, totally ripe for disruption.
The level of service is pretty low too. Its basically handling setting up a few appointments to see houses, helping grease the skids for inspections, and setting up a closing with a settlement company/lawyer. Stuff that really doesn't take all that much expertise/knowledge.
I'm sure there are little things that go on behind the magic curtain, but definitely something that could be automated in a b2b fashion.
The worst part of it all - all that money is spent basically to protect the seller so they can wash their hands of the whole deal once the house is sold. There is very little to no buyer protection in the real estate world.
Sadly your commission on that million dollar house is actually $45k -- Redfin cuts their seller's agent commission in half (3% becomes 1.5%) but the other half goes to the buyer's agent, so you pay 4.5% rather than 6%.
But if your house is sold for $100,000 you'd pay $6,000 or $3,000 to Redfin. The whole thing is just the biggest currently running scam that I can think of and someone will come along and totally disrupt this entire industry of scammers :-)