Is a Sacramento Real Estate Agent Worth the Money?

If you’re thinking about going into real estate because you want to make a lot of money for doing little work, you can figure on joining the 80% of real estate agents in Sacramento who don’t make enough money from the business to adequately support a ferret. This is not to say there aren’t Sacramento real estate agents who can’t even change out a light bulb who make money but they are not in the majority. Most of the agents who make a lot of money work very hard for it and have survived this grueling business.

I received an email this morning from a woman in Wisconsin who was very upset that she had to pay a commission to an agent, even though she agreed to pay it.  Is a Sacramento real estate agent worth the money? She didn’t think so. She had read my article about How Much Do Real Estate Agents Make? She didn’t believe it was fair that she pay “6% on an $800,000 home,” which she also further stated had amounted to $60,000, so you can see she struggles a bit with math.

Apparently, she had hired an agent last year who had agreed to negotiate his commissions, whatever that meant. In my book, once you sign a listing agreement, you’ve pretty much agreed to the commission, but maybe they do things differently in cheesehead territory — which I can say because I’m from Minnesota and we are allowed to poke fun at those from Wisconsin, neener, neener. Regardless, this agent who would “negotiate” could not sell her home. So much for that agent.

Fast forward to this year, and she signed a one-party show agreement of sorts, I suspect. The agent showed up, brought a buyer, brought an offer and now they are about to go into contract. Is this woman overjoyed that her home finally sold at a price she was willing to sell? Hardly. The writer believes it is “offensive” and it is “insane” to pay an agent that sum of money. She wants to know how she can wiggle out of that obligation. For her, the question of is a Sacraemento real estate agent worth the money her entire issue.

This is a woman I can picture thinking about a career in real estate. The lucrative real estate business probably seems so simple and easy to her. She doesn’t see the years of struggling to pay the dues and learning the business. She imagines big stacks of gold hidden in the basement. In the overall scheme of things, agents tend to get paid exactly what they are worth.

I can’t say I’ve ever, in all of my 40 years in the real estate business, had a seller tell me I made too much money. I’ve had sellers give me gift cards as a bonus after closing, in one case recently, $500 extra, because they felt I wasn’t paid enough as a full-service agent. Nobody has ever asked is a Sacramento real estate agent worth the money when they hired me.