{"id":4508,"date":"2012-05-05T15:35:40","date_gmt":"2012-05-05T21:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=4508"},"modified":"2012-05-05T15:35:40","modified_gmt":"2012-05-05T21:35:40","slug":"why-is-it-so-expensive-to-buy-or-sell-a-house-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=4508","title":{"rendered":"Why is it so expensive to buy or sell a house in America?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/node\/21554204?fsrc=scn\/tw\/te\/ar\/thegreatrealtorripoff\">The Economist<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>I made $970,000 last year. How much did you make?<\/p>\n<p>IN BRITAIN, if you want to sell your home, an estate agent will list the property, find a buyer, help you negotiate a deal and guide you through the transaction, all for a commission of 2-3% of the sale price. In America, realtors provide the same services for roughly double the fee.<\/p>\n<p>Are they worth it? The shouty realtors in David Mamet\u2019s film Glengarry Glen Ross (pictured) certainly think so. (\u201c[My] watch costs more than your car\u2026that\u2019s who I am.\u201d) Others disagree. Chang-Tai Hsieh of the University of Chicago finds that American property brokers cause \u201csocial waste\u201d of $8 billion a year via overcharging and inefficiency.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Economist: I made $970,000 last year. How much did you make? IN BRITAIN, if you want to sell your home, an estate agent will list the property, find a buyer, help you negotiate a deal and guide you through the transaction, all for a commission of 2-3% of the sale price. In America, realtors [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4508"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}