There's an assumption that the 6% typically paid in realtor commissions on a home sale is worth it because the seller will command a higher price than if he'd gone the "for sale by owner" route. But a trio of academics who researched years of home sales says that this assumption is false. In fact, they discovered that owner sellers got higher sales prices than owners who involved—and paid a commission to—real estate agents.
One of the researchers, Aviv Nevo, a marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management, econ professor at Northwestern, offers this main eye-opening conclusion:
"Our key finding is that Realtors do not offset the cost of their commission; they do not get you a higher price."
http://goo.gl/NF62k
