Are you a home buyer? Are you a home seller? Either ways you are most likely bound to work with a real estate agent.
Real estate agents are unlike other professionals who bill their clients at hourly rates or show an invoice at the end of a project. They are professionals that are paid at the end of a sales transaction.
Real estate agents may work with a buyer or a seller for weeks or months yet still get no pay until there is a resulting transaction. In short, they are not paid for their time. They earn a commisiion based on the sales price of the home and receive that commission only after the transaction goes to settlement.
Commissions are negotiable between listing agents and their clients. Some brokerages offer commission discounts for the sellers, but a typical commission is averaging on 3% yet again, it is negotiable.
Most of the times the commission is evenly split between the buyers' agent and the listing agent. However, there are also times that split is negotiated unevenly.
Technically speaking, the total commission is always paid by the seller at the settlement table where the fee is subtracted from the proceeds of the home sale.
On the other hand, in a sense the buyers are paying the commission because they are paying to buy the house and the sellers have taken the Realtors commission into account when determining a certain listing price. The commission then is split at the settlment table between the listing agent's brokerage and the buyer's agent brokerage. The agents then get paid by their brokers.
As a seller of your home, you are surely bound to face upon a line of taxes, commissions and other fees that could cost at around 4% to 7% of your sale price.
So, the question is: How will you know how much money you will walk away with?
The answer is your Realtor should be able to give you a worksheet itemizing all of the charges you are responsible for.
Always look after every responsibility you have to take care of whether you are buying or selling a home. Getting a good real estate agent would be a perfect choice either ways. Paying additional costs for the real estate agents are not really bad at all - you just have to know exactly how everything works.
Check more about this topic here in my website and learn how much do Austin real estate agents get paid.
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