Rain City Guide

Following up with Tim’s post on getting rid of YSP, I thought I’d share my idea on just getting rid of commissions being paid to a Mortgage Originator all together.  Why stop at the misunderstood yield spread premium when the current system is flawed.   Why should be we be compensated based off of what size the loan amount is [...]

Seattle is doing a lot of recycling and New York is listening. Did you know that it will soon be illegal to throw away food scraps? At Chez Ward we feed food scraps to the red worms in the bin so we don’t have to pay the city to haul our scraps away and then [...]

Seriously, this whole “6% is sancrosanct” crap is just a joke and a misnomer.
Here’s the reality. It often takes 6% of WHATEVER to close it out, to make it happen, for all parties to accomplish the final objective.
Where does that 6% go? Depends on the sale price and the events that take place. I have [...]

Joe asked: Ardell, I was wondering if you would care to comment on the Jerry Seinfeld case.
Thanks Joe, for the opportunity to sort out this “No Commission for You!” case. It’s a shame Seinfeld is no longer on TV, as this would make a great episode where they could play the “No Soup for [...]

Well I have to admit that it has been a very, very odd year indeed for me. I stumbled into the world of blogging, and I had no idea where it would take me. Well it took me into a totally consumer-centric view of my world.
Transparency turned out to be much more transparent [...]

The contributors at Rain City Guide (RCG) have been falling over themselves talking about the folks at Redfin. Don’t know who they are? Not a shock. They’re a real estate firm based in the Seattle area with offices in the Bay area of San Fran which has a discount model for services. Earlier this [...]

Redfin creates Red Faces
With Redfin I think they create red faces in the market, mostly from competitors, not their very own clients. With all the debating taking place (see last few comments) about variations of service levels and discussion about saving $20,000 in commissions but losing $100,000 in price for an agent’s [...]

At first glance it might appear that Greg Swan and I are like-minded when it comes to commission issues. but not so. Greg and I do agree that the buyer should not be led around thinking they are getting a free ride compliments of the seller, and we are both part of a growing [...]

We lost IT. We use to have IT and now we lost IT and now you can get it on ebay! This IT is that huge chunk of our commission that used to come from being the gatekeeper to the multiple. At a listing presentation our competition was only another agent that charged the [...]

I know that applying the “Goldilocks Principle” puts me in the category of “hopeless utopian”, but hey, for one solid year, until December 31, 2006, I am going to stay in this thought mode.
I’ve tried various commissions with various people, and for the most part disregarded anything I’ve ever known, and everything that anyone [...]