There are all sorts of businesses and careers that should have been retired to the dustbin of history by now. Let me illustrate:
The only real advantage that realtors had was being the sole arbiters of access to the MLS. The Internet has completely destroyed that. I have bought and sold 7 different houses during my lifetime. I did it in a few different ways: Using an agent, doing it myself, and buying from the builder. Here is my take:
In a good real estate market, houses are easy to sell yourself. Put them on Zillow, fill out the papers, get the title company to do the rest. In a bad market, it takes some effort to sell a house. The one we recently sold took six months to sell. The agent had to hold a dozen open houses. She did them on weekend mornings for about 2 hours each. So call it about 25 hours of sales work. She also had to do some work once the seller contacted us. Call it about 10 more hours of work. So I essentially used up a week of that woman’s time. For that, she and the buyer’s agent charged me a total of more than $16,000, or nearly $200 an hour. I don’t think the services I got were worth that much.
Don’t get me wrong, she did her job well and I don’t blame her for the price- that price is just what it costs. I like the woman, and I would hire her again, but I have a problem with the expectation that 5% of the sale price of the home is just pissed away for a job that is essentially obsolete in these days of the Internet.
Many businesses have been changed or eliminated by e-commerce: The recording industry, video rentals, movie theaters, retail stores, I’m sure you can think of others. There are other industries that have also been rendered obsolete or should no longer exist in their current form, mostly because the Internet has changed the landscape.
There are some industries that have adapted by offering things that you can’t get online- SCUBA shops offer diving lessons and tank refills, pool supply stores that offer to test your pool water for free, then make money by selling the needed chemicals.
The other way to survive is through government regulation, for example: gun stores and insurance companies both rely on government regulations to eliminated much of their competition. If an online company like Amazon sold guns, most gun stores would go under unless they could offer something other than access to guns. That’s why so many gun stores secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) support gun controls like prohibiting online sales.
The point of this post, which has taken me a bit to get to is this: The science nerds like Elon Musk like to claim technology, AI, and robotics will eliminate the need for people to work. That will never happen. If the Internet didn’t destroy retail, AI and robotics certainly won’t destroy employment to the point where UBI is needed.
10 Comments
Don Curton · January 14, 2026 at 11:41 am
Your definitely ahead of me – I’ve bought 4 and sold 3. The first two were prior to widespread internet use. I’ve had one good agent and several not so good. Here’s what the good agent provided – she knew the area better than we did. She would politely steer us away from, shall we say, high diversity neighborhoods, by using language like “good school district” or “low crime rate” with a wink and a nod. That’s worth the cost of admission if you’re new to an area. In addition, she had contacts in the industry. Need a home inspection? She could make a call and get an inspector out there that same day. And a good inspector (cause there are plenty who aren’t). She made sure the inspector walked the property while we were there so we could see what he found and what it meant. She knew local contractors and could get estimates for various repairs prior to you making an offer, so you would know and be able to bargain effectively. She knew title companies, who to call, who to avoid. All told, she made the process easier and earned her money.
That said, at this point I think I know enough to avoid a realtor if I ever need to move again. For every good realtor, there’s plenty more bad ones who’ll push you into whatever house they can find, they push for a quick deal to earn the commission faster, and they’ll move on.
Honk Honk · January 14, 2026 at 12:55 pm
Realtors are a construct of the white male patriarchy.
“I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown.
It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.”
Charlie Chaplin
Treefarmer · January 14, 2026 at 2:30 pm
I’ve had the same real estate experiences as you. The title company is really the key player. They do most of the work and 100% of the valuable work. The lowest barriers to entry of any profession is probably realtor. No skill, education, or experience is required.
Nightraker · January 14, 2026 at 3:33 pm
Just FYI: Purchasing a gun over the internet isn’t hard, just a tad bit involved. ANY local FFL can receive a weapon you’ve selected from a site like gunbroker.com, gunsamerica.com, bud’s gun shop, and others. The sales site will have a list of local kitchen table individual FFL’s that will receive the gun, set up a meeting and make the transfer 4473 form and background check call. All for a nominal fee. The sales site operates in a Ebay similar fashion with thousands of gun shops listing any new or used gun you’d like.
I tried, really tried, to have a local brick and mortar shop acquire a new model pistol not yet in stock for me. The proprietor wanted $400 or 25% for their overhead and markup. Fair enough, but the guy without that overhead charged $25. And I paid for shipping and a 3% fee for plastic money. In the past, I’ve over-nighted postal money orders to the seller, essentially a cash transaction.
Divemedic · January 14, 2026 at 4:01 pm
That’s because the local FFL that actually transfers the firearm to you is the only one the ATF cares about. I know all about buying guns online. I used to go to CDNN and buy Black Stainless Sig P229’s all the time. They used to have great deals on them, and that particular gun is what I used to run at the IDPA matches. What would happen if people could just go directly to an Internet gun store and order firearms like they do Chinese crap from Amazon? Picture a store like NewEgg, but for guns? How many LGS would go out of business?
I detest most local gun stores for that reason. I once was in a gun store during one of those gun shortages, and they had priced an AR stripped lower at over $500.
JNorth · January 14, 2026 at 4:15 pm
That’s been my experience with buying houses (bought 3, sold 0). The first one was just the previous owner (my old landlord), the title company, and myself. The second one was a foreclosure that had issues but eventually went back to the bank (Wells Fargo) who wouldn’t deal directly with me so I had to get a realtor. Third was just my grandmothers estate, the title company and myself.
There some education required to be a realtor as they are licensed in my area and have to pass a test but considering I’ve bought two properties w/o one I’m not sure how useful that license and education is.
Henry · January 14, 2026 at 6:11 pm
Bought 3 houses, sold three. Most recently, I sold my parents’ 72-year old house (I’m the executor of the estate) that’s 800 miles away from where I live. My brother (lives a little closer to it) found an exceptionally good realtor for me. This guy specializes in that one town, predicted the house would sell and close quickly, predicted it would get multiple offers above listing price. All came true – sold in the first weekend. He arranged for a local expediter to handle the missing building permits, final inspections, got a contractor to fix the required things to pass inspection, got another contractor to clean out the house. He was worth every penny of the 2% commission he got.
I used a buyer’s agent to buy my present home and the couple were ideal. They steered us away from neighborhoods they knew we wouldn’t care for (and they were right) and got a great house for us. They lined up an attorney to handle the closing, recommended a number of local businesses for improvements we wanted to make prior to moving in, steered us to the best insurance agency in the area, etc. Worth every penny.
All the other agents involved in previous transactions ranged from mediocre to downright unethical, including one who failed to inform us of a full-price offer on the house we were selling because he didn’t like the buyer’s agent. He was also lazy, and I’m pretty sure was getting kickbacks from attorneys and others.
Cederq · January 14, 2026 at 7:33 pm
I have bought 5 houses in my lifetime, the first was by far the easiest, a fellow nurse was was building his house in a rural area, the foundation poured and deck down and entered a bitter divorce, a handshake, a title company paperwork and it was mine. Built the house over two years. Second was attained by the use of a realtor, bad experience. The last three were a handshake, a local lawyer for proper contract and title company, easy peasey! I still paid less for a lawyer than rip off from a realtor, $550.00 for legal services.
DougH · January 15, 2026 at 8:21 am
Very minor quibble: The recording industry is doing OK (those that record), it’s the record industry (those that sell recordings) that’s failing.
Real estate agents: Seems to be filled with liberal white women; now they’re going to have to find something else to do.
Jim · January 16, 2026 at 11:37 am
Check out OPEN on the stock market.