Relevance of real estate agents is on the table

Less than two months ago, Joanne Cleaver sold her home in a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina, for $725,000 in an unusual way: Facebook Marketplace.

She did not hire a real estate agent, lining up a lawyer instead to do the closing, and she declined to pay a commission to the buyer’s agent — a standard practice of the industry which for decades has put the burden of commissions of around 5% or 6% of the home’s sales price on the seller, though the fees were split between agents for the buyer and the seller.