What if their knowledge of the market and negotiating helped you get an extra $60k in value on the sale of your home vs. selling it yourself?

Then it would make sense to have a model where the agent gets a very small percent up to a certain price, and a much larger percent above that threshold. Does this ever happen?

Someone is paying. If the agent charges $30k + extra $60k you're saying buyers should avoid RE listed properties and buy direct.

Given the amount of weird and unrealistic expectations of both buyers and sellers nonstop in a transaction " the one smoothing things out" can be translated to "the essential element to actually closing the deal". There is a reason why most FSBOs wind up with an agent. They fuck it up.

I would argue that the reason is because they're tired of being pestered by would-be listing agents. I have a property listed as FSBO for the last 4 weeks and so far I have received 67 calls from listing agents, all documented in a spreadsheet so I can block them via Google Voice.

Or it may be that buyer's agents actively steer their clients away from FSBO properties which one person revealed to me during a showing even though the listing states I'll pay 2.5% to the buyer. I requested and now have that in writing from this buyer in case I feel like filing a complaint. You should have seen the agent's face when I said my email was in the listing and she could ask me any questions directly if she liked. An agent mortified by the thought of direct communication between buyer and the person who knows the property best.

Actual potential buyers send emails. Agents seem to only communicate via phone, probably because they believe they can charm you.

Totally agree.

It's like saying if I trained hard enough I could be in the NFL. Well - "training hard enough" is actually hard to do.

I purchased a home recently and my buddy tried to sell his FSBO. I told him to use the same title company, because we had a painless closing. The title company told him that they do not do title work for FSBO's because "not enough of them actually disperse funds, so we don't get end up getting paid on the title searches and work we do before the closings. We prefer working with clients that have a much higher probability of closing".

That's a title companies perspective. They are getting paid either way and don't get paid more if it's with a real estate agent or FSBO. That's about as unbiased as you can get in that market, one would think.

You dont need to use a realtor, its a voluntary transaction. If you find the price too high dont use them.

That's the answer that's supposed to end this argument, but real estate business is a cabal: if I'm agent-less or use one of the "disruptor" services, like redfin or openlistings, agents of the other party will simply steer clear of the transactions. Some would even say that to my face.

But thats only valuable because they steer buyers as well, and if you want access to those buyers you need to cater to the agents that won their trust by educating, managing, etc.

It's not 3% for every price range. For example, $1 M price ranges pay way less.