Eg your bank genuinely helps with finance and transfers compared to transacting directly on a blockchain or snail mailing cash around.
> I think people just want someone else to take care of their shit.
Yes, division of labour!
Purely on a philosophical point of view and depending on where you live, they do nothing but increase the costs without adding value.
For example, realtors made sense back in the day when there was no internet. But, what value does a real estate agent add in 2026? An owner can list their apartment/house directly online. The buyer and search, find and contact the owner directly, a lot of times even for free (FB Marketplace, WhatsApp groups, etc.).
The most common argument is - "when things go wrong, the agent will take on the liability for the listing", but that is rarely the case in real life (again, may vary greatly depending on where you live). In most of Asia, this is not the case at all. They take their nice fat commission and wash their hands off later, not even picking up your calls most of the time when there is an issue.
So what do agents do now? They hoard information instead. They advertise good listings, but to talk to the owner you will need to engage (and pay them) first.
Real estate agents are just one. Car dealerships rank right on the second in my list.
We don't need more agents. We need democratized access to information.
On the other hand, I do care about people that are knowledgeable of these details, specialized, and trust to handle them for me for a fee.
That’s true of banking, realting, health, security, building, manufacturing of everything I use (or almost). That doesn’t prevent me from vaguely understanding the principles and some bits. And that saved me a ton of time and worry. But for the few times one agent does not work up to his promises.
I am 49, I have dealt enough with try to do all by myself, and I do appreciate and rely onto middlemen way earlier now.
How will anyone find the house? If I use an online estate agent, then that's still a middle man. If I publish adverts on Facebook or Google, that's a middle man. If I'm hoping that I can generate enough SEO for my house to appear at the top of searches, that's also relying upon a middle man - the search engine. I guess I could just put a board outside the house with a URL on it and hope someone stops to take a photo.
Estate agents provide that marketing service as well as others around arranging viewings and interaction with solicitors, although that might be UK specific. But they do provide a service that would take a crazy amount of time for you to replicate by yourself for a one-off house sale.
Right now your realtor is paying your listing fees, paying a photographer (maybe) and paying to stage the home (again, maybe). Those are all fixed fees. Then the realtor takes a percentage of the transaction. If the realtor goes away, those fixed-fee services can all still exist and be easy to use. You could even replace the realtor with a general contractor sort of person who manages them and also charges a fixed fee and it’d still be a win.
1) My ISP because I use internet through them
2) My phone service provider, because I make calls via their network
3) My car manufacturer / leasing because I pay a monthly fee to go visit the listing
But, by my perhaps opinionated definition, none of the above should be classified as active middlemen because they don't interfere with my transaction w.r.t the listing. Facebook and WhatsApp are not active middlemen. They are simply just a listing service. I could replace them with say, Craigslist or even a Google sites web page and I would still be fine. The worst that could happen is I might be asked to pay a small fixed fee like $20 for a listing/webpage. The service provider (generally) doesn't care what the listing is about. That's why it's passive.
Real estate agents are active middlemen. They in most cases prevent the transaction altogether if you don't use them. They are not asking a fixed fee, they are asking for a percentage of the transaction - when the value they add doesn't compound with the transaction amount. That's why.
Generally, I see no problem with competent middle men. They offer a service like any other service. If you want the service, you buy it, and if you don't want it you don't.
I’d be willing to bet the reason there is a lot of bureaucracy at play is At least in part because realtors wanted job security. Just like taxes staying complex because of lobbying from tax prep companies.
Is anyone forcing you realtors where you live?
FB Marketplace is just another middle man. (And that supports my thesis from another follow up comment: you want lots of competing middle man!)
Btw, real estate agents in eg the UK take about half the cut in a typical home sale compared to the US.
> Car dealerships rank right on the second in my list.
Yes, and as far as I know they are only a problem in the US, and that's because the US has crazy regulations that pretty much mandate car dealerships. In eg Germany you can buy your car direct from Volkswagen or from any dealership you want.
> We don't need more agents. We need democratized access to information.
Let a thousand flowers bloom. We need more agents, more competition. (But also make direct access legal, where possible.)
Yes. You can self-list on fb marketplace, but you can’t list a home in the MLS listing service they all use without using a realtor - and the buyer’s agents won’t show your home or suggest it to their clients.
So yes, they are using their dominant position in the market to protect their dominant position in the market.
By that time, no one can do without the nasty middle man as we have forgotten or never learned the skills to fend for ourselves and are thus beholden to the nasty middle man.
Network effect compounds this
Remember: Facebook is for grandparents, not where the cool kids hang out.
