Ask HN: I hated buying a house, how can we fix it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1730341

by d4ft • 16 years ago

12 8 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hi all-

A close family member was recently in the market for her first house. The process, with which I was designated helper, pretty much sucked from start to finish. Agents make some ridiculous fee, which totally sucks for sellers, and in turn, might inflate home prices. The whole bidding process kind of sucks. Finding out how much you can afford is also fairly obtuse. In sum, I would love to have had a nice "Mint-ish" website to help me along with the whole deal. Is there any market for this kind of app, a sort of "marrily" meets "mint" for home buyers? If so, what type of functionality would be useful?

runT1ME• 16 years ago

Redfin.com is doing pretty well right now in cutting down that fee...

d4ft• 16 years ago

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I guess I meant more of a handholding for the process as a whole, not a better way to do search specifically.

AmberShah• 16 years ago

I think they are also trying to help consumers. I listened to an interview where they said they have people on staff that will talk to customers and help them through the process. They are trying to make the searching process (and fees) make more sense. I think what you are describing may be more of a feature to RedFin than a brand new idea.

brudgers• 16 years ago

The National Association of Realtors has a formidable marketing presence. Their competition, like BuyOwner is no slouch either.

The market for "How to buy a House" is flooded with free sites and a full of noise.

Given that home buying is in a downward cycle, the war chests of the competition and the maturity of the market, I don't think there's much opportunity.

philiphodgen• 16 years ago

There are some in the real estate brokerage community who are trying to change the system. Check out http://bloodhoundblog.com. You may not agree with their aims (keeping agents in the middle, for instance) but they are fighting the good fight against the National Association of Realtors and, as they call it, Rotarian Socialism. :-)

Boil it all down though and they are committed to using tech tools to give their clients a better result. Any movement in that general direction is praiseworthy.

One of the reasons that home buying is such a shit experience is frankly because of government intervention. The quantity of useless paperwork required in California is staggering and grows each year. I am not convinced that it helps anyone involved in a transaction.

Information asymmetry and transaction costs. There are probably a zillion little MVPs in real estate that can slowly attack one or both of these problems.

CaptainDecisive• 16 years ago

There's a great deal of good info out there on personal finance blogs, websites and books regarding mortgages and affordability. There is no shortage of good information.

Remember most people are making the single biggest purchase of their lives, so if they're not prepared to do a LOT of research and due diligence then I kinda feel they only have themselves to blame.

The problem I see is that many people seem to think they can stick their head in the sand and buy in help. Unfortunately said bought help might have other motivations than their clients which can lead to problems (see 2007 real estate crash and Great Recession).

andrewtbham• 16 years ago

You think it's bad now? When i was young my dad was a real estate agent and the MLS had a total monopoly on all the data... so you basically had to have an agent to find out the comparable house prices and get good list of all houses for sales. these days with sites like zillow... make it much easier as a buyer.

however, unless you buy from a FSBO (for sale by owner) the selling agent will take both sides of the commision.

on the selling side... having a good agent can be a big help... especially in this market, an aggressive agent may be the difference in selling or not.

ia• 16 years ago

i am currently going through the process with redfin. it has been hands-down the best customer service i've experienced, doing anything, ever. the hand-holding is there if you want it--in fact, i warned the "field agent" that hand-holding would be required when we started looking at properties. she took it in stride and was incredibly helpful.

Ask HN: I hated buying a house, how can we fix it.

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