Laura Kusisto
speaker
689 appearances
14 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2017
last heard Nov 2023
Laura Kusisto’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
They say this is not consumer friendly.
This means that essentially you have buyers who are already having to put up money for a down payment, who aren't about to sell their home and get the proceeds from that.
You're pushing this cost onto them up front at the beginning of the transaction when they have the least money to play with.
So that's sort of the argument.
We have consumer advocate types who've been looking at this issue and have proposed sort of different solutions for how we might be able to deal with that.
And so one that I'd say is the most popular is this would be sort of negotiated as part of the transaction in the way that sellers will sometimes cover closing costs.
And so the buyer would say to the seller, hey, like as part of this deal, I would like you to cover the cost of what I've agreed to pay my agent.
And that's probably the most popular proposal we see floating out there.
In a really hot housing market or even a market like now where inventory is just extremely tight, the seller is going to have the upper hand.
They're going to have a lot of negotiating power, and they may not feel like they really want to make that concession and cover the commission for the buyer.
the reason why this is resonating so strongly with people around the country is because of how high home prices are and really how poor affordability is right now as a combination of home prices and mortgage rates.
That kind of resonant message for consumers is we could make it a little bit cheaper, a little bit more affordable for you to buy a home.
Whether that's how it plays out in this sort of idealistic way, I don't know.
But I think that's really where this issue is getting people's hearts.
There are different views about why this has happened.
But what I can tell you is that I covered housing for five years.
I've been continuing to follow these cases as a legal reporter and sort of my whole time covering this issue.
Almost every startup that I've seen has failed.
Any startup that's come in trying to offer lower fees, particularly trying to offer lower fees to buyers, agents, has gone down in flames.
The question would be, if the rules change, could we see a little bit more innovation in this space?
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