Why are we still paying 5–6% real estate commission?

Short answer: mostly habit, bundling, and the fact that nobody shows you the bill until you are already at the closing table. I say that as a licensed broker who has collected these commissions. The question deserves a real answer, not a defensive one.

What 6% used to buy

The percentage commission was built for a world where the agent WAS the market. Before the internet, the listing agent held the information: which homes were for sale, what comparable houses had sold for, which buyers were looking. Marketing meant the agent's phone book, the agent's newspaper contacts, the agent's office window. Paying a percentage of the sale bought you access to a private network you could not reach any other way.

That world is gone. Buyers find homes themselves — on the portals, in about eleven seconds. Sale records are public. Photography is digital. The information monopoly the commission was priced on has not existed for twenty years, but the price survived it.

Why the price survived

• Bundling. The traditional commission wraps everything — pricing advice, photos, listing, showings, negotiation, paperwork shepherding — into one number you cannot itemize. You cannot see what each piece costs, so you cannot question any of them.

• You pay at the finish line. The fee comes out of the sale proceeds, so it never feels like writing a check. A $36,000 line item on a settlement statement stings less than a $3,600 invoice ever would — which is exactly why it can stay that large.

• "That's just what it costs." Percentage pricing survives because everyone quotes the same number, and questioning it has meant doing everything alone. Until recently, the alternative to 6% was zero help — and most people reasonably did not want zero help.

• The rules changed only recently. The 2024 industry settlement decoupled the two halves of the commission: sellers are no longer expected to automatically fund the buyer's agent. Fewer sellers know this than should. What you offer a buyer's agent is now openly negotiable, and separate from what you pay for your own representation.

What agents genuinely still add

Honesty cuts both ways. Some of what a good agent does remains genuinely valuable: pricing a home from real evidence instead of hope, negotiating when the inspection report lands, keeping a deal alive through attorney review, reading which buyer is solid and which will walk. In New York and Connecticut, where every closing runs through attorneys and deals have real ways to die, that experience matters.

The dishonest part of the traditional model is the pricing, not the work. The work does not cost 6% of your house. It never did — the percentage just rode along as your home's value tripled.

What selling costs when you unbundle it

This is the part that has actually changed. When a platform does the busywork — building the listing, syndicating it to the MLS and every major portal, scheduling showings, organizing offers and paperwork in one dashboard — the honest price of a sale looks like this:

• Run your own sale: $899 flat. Full MLS exposure, the portals, the tools, and locqube AI guiding every step. You keep the rest of your equity.

• A dedicated licensed agent: 1.99% at closing. The full experience — pricing strategy, negotiation, contracts, closing — from an in-house agent whose tools do the busywork so their time goes to you.

On a $600,000 sale, that is the difference between roughly $36,000 and either $11,940 or $899. Run your own number in thirty seconds on our commission calculator — it is the fastest way to see what the old model actually charges for.

Questions sellers ask

Is a discount service the same as a discount outcome?
The fear is fair; the data is not kind to it. What sells a home is exposure and pricing: the MLS, the portals, and a number the market believes. Those are exactly the pieces that no longer cost 6% to deliver. What you should verify about any lower-cost option: a licensed brokerage behind it, real MLS listing, and no surprise fees at closing.

Do I still have to pay the buyer's agent?
No — since the 2024 settlement, that offer is yours to make or not, openly negotiated. Many sellers still offer something to keep the buyer pool wide; the point is that it is now a decision, not a default.

What does "the platform does the busywork" actually mean?
Listing creation with AI-written descriptions, photography scheduling, showing coordination, offer tracking, document collection — the hours that used to justify the fee, handled in software you can watch work in your dashboard.

Curious what your sale would cost? Start with your home's free value estimate — then decide what the help is worth.

By Manuel Pantiga, licensed real estate broker (New York & Connecticut) and co-founder of locqube.