One lady’s crusade against commissions
From the LA Times Land Blog, Kate’s Commission-Cutting Crusade:
Traditionally, when you buy a house you just give the purchase money to the seller and the seller pays the 5% commission out of that. But when you think about it, you are agreeing to pay 5% more for the house, and that translates to a bigger down payment, a bigger mortgage and bigger property taxes every year. So I figured it would be brilliant to subtract the 5% off the purchase price and pay the agents’ commissions separately myself. Seems like no big deal, right? Wrong.