“Agents are useless now”… right?

Lately I’m seeing it all over social media.

“AI is going to replace real estate agents.”

“Why not just hire an attorney for $300 and skip the commission?”

“I work too hard for my money to just give it away to you Mike. If you can do it for 1% I’ll sign right now, because my buddy that I play hockey with will do it for 1.5%. (real quote from last week).

Bahahahahahaha. Just so I understand, if I’ll do it for 1, are you now shopping me to get .75? (and is that guy really a buddy, that you’d do that?)

Please, let me help you find a true discount broker. They’ll put a sign in your lawn for you.

Someone will race you to the bottom, but it ain’t this old, fat kid.

On paper, it sounds efficient and logical, finding the lowest price or fee.

Until you’re actually in the middle of a real deal, with 5,6, or 10 personalities in a deal all demanding attention. Now, there is real money at risk, not a nebulous percentage.

Here’s what never makes it into the memes and hot takes:

• The buyer who gets spooked and wants to walk and the agent(s) get to put the deal back together.

* Or no HOA status letter the day before closing ( is that FSBO making a call on Friday afternoon to track it down because this will not close without it; what do you think?).

AI can write a decent description.

It cannot walk into a house and tell you:

“Even if you get someone to step all over themselves and pay your number, you have no shot at a successful appraisal. Would you like to hear what happens then? ”

or

“This thing is going to sit.”

That comes from actually knowing the market and understanding buyer and seller psychology.

An attorney can review documents.

But the attorney usually isn’t calling the other side at 8:30 pm trying to keep a nervous buyer and stubborn seller from blowing up a deal over emotion.

I get the attorney argument for a bit, for I come from a state, New York, where the attorney’s bar runs the real estate transaction.

However, if you hire an attorney to ‘do the paperwork’, and without taking lawyers out to the woodshed and denigrating an entire industry, I ask you: are they really advocating for you best deal? Or are they ‘doing the paperwork?’

Here’s what a properly vetted agent looks like in real life:

On West Lake, nothing in that pocket of Littleton had traded north of $1.6M. And we were told that by many neighbors. We listed at $1.8M anyway because the data, positioning, and buyer pool supported testing higher. Within ten days we were under contract around 98% of list.

That wasn’t “opening doors. That was understanding exactly how far demand could stretch without breaking the deal. Result: An extra roughly $100K net in the seller’s pocket.

On Vassar in Boulder, $1.3M made sense on paper. In a normal market, maybe that’s where it lands. But on March 1st, with basically zero inventory and real scarcity in the market, we pushed harder. We launched at $1.4M. 48 buyers thru in three days. Under contract in three days. Same house. Same market.

Very different result; $80 – 90 grand net in the seller’s pocket.

Ask how we bought the Broomfield place 10k LESS than the highest offer, or how we made it easy for the seller to say yes to us in Lafayette when there was fierce demand and multiple offers. Or how you’ll see ONE expired listing in my stats (btw, ask me to run your potential agent’s expireds) because I won’t waste your time with a feel good price. Or how many listing appointments I’ve walked out of without the ink because a seller wanted to be told that they’re right instead of the truth.

Timing, positioning, condition, and buyer behavior matter. Sometimes the job is saving people from overpricing. Sometimes it’s pushing them higher than they thought was possible. Sometimes it’s stopping them from doing something very costly and emotional because they’re tired, frustrated, or listening to the wrong people. (Like the parents who bought in 1996 and ‘know how it works’.)

None of that is “just opening doors.”

Are there useless, overpaid agents?

Absolutely. Too many. Every industry has people who shouldn’t be in it.

But the difference between a warm body agent and an actual professional isn’t a couple grand.

Over one or two major moves, it’s often tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in either missed upside or unnecessary risk.

Because the people who really hurt you usually aren’t evil.

They just don’t know what they don’t know. And they don’t educate themselves to be better.

Or worse: they don’t care enough to slow you down before you make a bad decision.

If you’re buying or selling in the next 12-24 months, here’s my offer:

Before you pick an agent because they’re “cheap,” or you decide to DIY it because “how hard can it be,” let’s have a 15-minute conversation.

I’ll walk you through where people actually lose and make serious money in this market using real numbers, real examples, and actual market behavior.

No pressure. No script. No BS.

Just math, reality, market conditions, and some frank talk.