Real Estate Is Starting to Unbundle. Good Agents Should Welcome It

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For most of my career around housing, we have talked about a real estate agent’s value as though it were one thing.

It isn’t.

An agent may help a buyer understand a market, find properties, arrange showings, evaluate price, write an offer, negotiate terms, manage inspections, solve problems with the transaction, coordinate with the lender and title company, and get a nervous client through one of the largest financial decisions of their life. Traditionally, most of those services have been packaged together and compensated through a commission tied to the price of the home.

Technology is beginning to ask an uncomfortable question about that arrangement: What happens when consumers can buy some of those services without buying all of them?

That question may ultimately prove more disruptive to real estate than the commission lawsuits themselves.

The National Association of Realtors’ settlement brought major practice changes in August 2024. Offers of compensation could no longer be displayed on MLSs subject to the settlement rules, and agents working with buyers generally had to enter into written agreements before touring a home. Compensation also had to be clearly disclosed and negotiable.

There was enormous speculation at the time about what those changes would do to commissions.

Two years later, the more interesting question may be what happens to the service underneath the commission.

A growing collection of companies is testing alternatives to the traditional percentage model. TurboHome, for example, markets buyer representation using licensed agents, technology and a flat-fee structure. Qilo is marketing a $2,999 flat-fee platform that includes digital offers, pricing tools, contracts and closing guidance. Flat-fee listing businesses have existed for years, and some now allow sellers to choose among different levels of assistance rather than purchasing a traditional full-service listing package.

I don’t know which of these companies will succeed. Some will probably disappear. Others will change their models. We have seen enough supposedly revolutionary real estate companies come and go that nobody should declare the traditional brokerage business dead because another website has a lower price.

But I think the idea underneath these businesses deserves considerably more attention.

Technology is making it easier to separate the mechanics of a real estate transaction from the judgment required to navigate one.

Those are not the same thing.

Searching listings is not the same as knowing which house to buy. Generating a market analysis is not the same as understanding why two seemingly comparable properties should not be valued the same way. Preparing documents is not the same as knowing what belongs in an offer. Scheduling an inspection is not the same as recognizing which inspection issue should change a negotiation.

And having software available when something goes wrong is not the same as having an experienced professional who has already seen it go wrong twenty times.

That distinction is where I think good agents have an opportunity.

For years, the industry has defended commissions by explaining how much work happens behind the scenes. There is truth in that. Consumers often see the showing and the offer but not the calls, coordination, negotiations and problem-solving required to get a complicated transaction across the finish line.

The problem is that technology is steadily reducing the value of some of those tasks.

Consumers already search for homes themselves. Electronic signatures made document execution routine. Automated valuation and market-data tools have become widely available. Scheduling, transaction management and document organization are increasingly software-driven. Artificial intelligence will accelerate some of this even further.

An agent shouldn’t be afraid to admit that.

We don’t preserve the value of a profession by pretending every task performed twenty years ago deserves the same economic value today.

We preserve it by becoming more valuable where technology isn’t enough.

I would be much more concerned about the future of an agent whose primary value proposition is access to listings, filling out forms and moving a transaction from one checklist item to another than I would be about an agent who understands a local market deeply, negotiates exceptionally well, recognizes risk and has earned the trust of clients who call before making important housing decisions.

Those are very different businesses, even if we currently call both of them real estate agents.

There is also a legitimate consumer argument for allowing more choice in how real estate services are purchased. Some buyers want considerable guidance. A first-time buyer navigating financing, inspections, contingencies and negotiations may place tremendous value on full representation. Someone buying their sixth investment property may want something entirely different.

The same is true on the listing side. One seller may need pricing strategy, staging advice, marketing, negotiation and hands-on management from beginning to end. Another may already have a buyer and need professional assistance with a much narrower part of the transaction.

Why should we assume those consumers must purchase exactly the same service package?

There are risks to breaking the transaction apart. Buying a home is not the same as purchasing an airline ticket online. Responsibilities overlap, problems in one part of the transaction can affect another, and consumers do not always know what they don’t know. State licensing laws also determine who can perform certain brokerage activities, so there is no single national blueprint for separating every function.

A cheap transaction that leaves a consumer poorly represented isn’t innovation.

At the same time, protecting consumers cannot become an excuse for protecting every element of the existing business model from competition.

That is why I think the emergence of flat-fee and more modular approaches could ultimately be healthy for good real estate professionals.

They force the industry to answer a question it should be able to answer anyway: What is the consumer actually paying us for?

If the answer is paperwork, access and process, technology is going to make that increasingly difficult to defend.

If the answer is expertise, judgment, negotiation, advocacy and the ability to keep an expensive and complicated transaction from going sideways, then demonstrate it. Explain it. Price it. Build a business around it.

I don’t believe consumers are going to stop needing real estate professionals. I do believe they will become less willing to pay for work they can clearly see technology performing more cheaply.

That doesn’t diminish the value of a great agent.

It may finally make that value easier to see.