> An owner can list their apartment/house directly online.
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.
> How will anyone find the house? If I use an online estate agent, then that's still a middle man.
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.
Thanks, this is the best logical explanation to this argument, hands-down.