In recent years, housing and real estate websites have improved efficiency and liquidity in the housing market, but most are still significantly overpaying real estate commisions.
At the same time, one can get caught in seasonal or financial squeezes and be forced to accept far less than otherwise for their property.
A stock market would start assigning value to the house in a similar way that the real estate market does (i.e. largely location), but would also provide liquidity so that buyers and sellers would not have to be quite as tightly coupled as they are today.-- theircompetitor, Mar 07 2005 Gilbert Realtor http://www.homeaz.net/gilbert-realtor.aspOffering Free Comparative Market Analysis [mickey, Oct 19 2005, last modified Jan 12 2010] Real Estate Stock Trading Instruments http://money.cnn.co..._home_price_market/Starting to get baked [theircompetitor, Mar 30 2009] Zillow starts buying homes from listers https://techcrunch....by-buying-up-homes/ [theircompetitor, Apr 15 2018] Surely buyers and sellers being tightly coupled is what constitutes (even defines) a market.[Edit]: Just realised that you probably mean *an individual buyer* and *an individual seller*; if so, please ignore me.-- angel, Mar 07 2005 Commodities are, at least from my understanding, not unique. Real estate locations, though, are unique.-- bristolz, Mar 07 2005 Unique, perhaps, but in the end you'll typically get for your house what your neighbors are getting, and pay upto 6 percent for the privilege.-- theircompetitor, Mar 07 2005 That depends on the homogeneity of the neighborhood. My husband and I have sold three homes at this point and have yet to use a realtor (something that baffles and amazes the realtors and leaves us baffled and amazed as to why they are baffled and amazed). Doing it yourself just isn't that hard. The web sure helps.-- bristolz, Mar 07 2005 I agree, [bristolz]. I guess I'm talking about scaling it way up.-- theircompetitor, Mar 07 2005 Any rating system for houses would need to take far more into consideration than just location, i.e. size, style, work done, enginneers report, etc.-- brodie, Mar 07 2005 If you want to move, talk to my wife - she's a broker. (And you may just discover what a good real estate broker can do for you that a website can't.)
The *only* way to uncouple buyers and sellers is to do what the stock market does, and have middlemen making a market. Since they are taking a profit, you can rest assured you will end up paying more, not less, when all is netted out.
For an illiquid asset like real estate, the market is really very transparent.-- DrCurry, Mar 07 2005 Are you thinking of something like craigslist, for houses, with a non-arbitrary rating system?-- brodie, Mar 07 2005 [DrCurry], maybe we are just lucky but we sold all three in less than a week each time (93, 97, 01). I just don't know how a broker would do anything for us. We priced the house at market and then reduced the price by the approximate commission. We got what we wanted and the buyer got a great deal.
The web allowed my husband to put extensive photos and details online in the last two sales efforts. Closing was handled by an attorney and the deals drafted between us and the buyers. It was no muss, no fuss and no 5 digit commission fees.-- bristolz, Mar 07 2005 [DrCurry] The one way to uncouple buyers and sellers is to do what the stock market does...
You think? That's why I posted the idea :)
I don't know if I believe that I'll pay more, and I may wind up with a substantially simpler transaction.
If you think about it, why is it simpler for me to buy a piece of IBM than a house?-- theircompetitor, Mar 07 2005 [brodie]. Houses get appraised all the time. So the "market maker" in your area would simply be willing to give you fair appraisal value.
Similarly on the other side, you'd be paying appraisal value.
Your bids and asks and sales would feed back into the system, affecting appraisal values-- theircompetitor, Mar 07 2005 What a difference a few years make.
Given what's going on with the market, this idea is more timely than ever. The new RTC is providing such liquidity for owners of derivatives. Such an exchange could provide liquidity directly to owners.-- theircompetitor, Sep 21 2008 i think this website exists. except that, because people customarily use agents to handle sales, it has become part of the agents marketing brief to 'list' the house on the web site, rather than, as I think you are proposing, the owner direct.
As per my comments at [solving the sub-prime mess], remove real estate agents, who are generally not educated regarding market dynamics, and the whole system will become more efficient.
[phoenix] insert replicatory contradictions below.-- williamsmatt, Sep 22 2008 I stand by my assertion that real estate agents do not establish market value. People will pay what they want to get what they want, nothing more, nothing less. To that end, real estate agent must understand market dynamics or they won't be in business very long.
You can remove a real estate agent from a home sales transaction exactly the same way you can remove a builder from a home construction transaction. You can sew your own clothes and grow your own corn too. I'm just sayin'.-- phoenix, Sep 22 2008 phoenix, i was trying to say 'skew' not 'establish'.-- williamsmatt, Sep 22 2008 See annotation of instruments that can be used to trade on real estate pricing direction and as direct hedges.-- theircompetitor, Mar 30 2009 What I think would be very useful is a system I read about that they use in Denmark, I think.
Right now, even the mortgage of a top-rated risk, if it were to be securitized, would be trading at a substantial discount to it's face value. What we need is to have a mechanism to allow homeowners to buy back their own mortgages at the discount.
Each mortgage is classified, according to it's risk characteristics, and put in a group. Then, if the market price for that group goes below face value, you have th eright to buy back your mortgage, or pay it off, at a discount.-- marquisdenet, Mar 31 2009 Interesting -- Zillow sees an opportunity to increasing liquidity in the market -- see link.-- theircompetitor, Apr 15 2018 random, halfbakery