Homebuyers gain an edge with Internet searches

The Sacramento Bee reports:

Fifteen years into the World Wide Web, home searches once defined by riding around in agents' sport-utility vehicles – a process in which agents knew all and a buyer knew little – have been thoroughly recast.

Buyers – 84 percent of whom use the Internet for house hunting, according to a California Association of Realtors study – have taken on much of the information gathering formerly done by agents, who occupy the middle of a transaction and typically get a commission of 6 percent of the sales price, 3 percent for the seller's agent and 3 percent for the buyer's agent.

A variety of mostly similar Web sites now enable buyers to browse homes for sale, probe a home's transaction history, gauge its tax bite, compare area values and even see, via aerial photos, whether the neighbors have planted grass in the backyard.

This maturing of real estate Web sites has raised questions about where 519,000 California agents and brokers fit in and opened some debate about the size of their commissions. At least one online brokerage is trying to redefine the agent pay structure to gain business by making it cheaper to buy and sell.

Anyone interested in real estate should read this one.