There are all sorts of businesses and careers that should have been retired to the dustbin of history by now. Let me illustrate:
The only real advantage that realtors had was being the sole arbiters of access to the MLS. The Internet has completely destroyed that. I have bought and sold 7 different houses during my lifetime. I did it in a few different ways: Using an agent, doing it myself, and buying from the builder. Here is my take:
In a good real estate market, houses are easy to sell yourself. Put them on Zillow, fill out the papers, get the title company to do the rest. In a bad market, it takes some effort to sell a house. The one we recently sold took six months to sell. The agent had to hold a dozen open houses. She did them on weekend mornings for about 2 hours each. So call it about 25 hours of sales work. She also had to do some work once the seller contacted us. Call it about 10 more hours of work. So I essentially used up a week of that woman’s time. For that, she and the buyer’s agent charged me a total of more than $16,000, or nearly $200 an hour. I don’t think the services I got were worth that much.
Don’t get me wrong, she did her job well and I don’t blame her for the price- that price is just what it costs. I like the woman, and I would hire her again, but I have a problem with the expectation that 5% of the sale price of the home is just pissed away for a job that is essentially obsolete in these days of the Internet.
Many businesses have been changed or eliminated by e-commerce: The recording industry, video rentals, movie theaters, retail stores, I’m sure you can think of others. There are other industries that have also been rendered obsolete or should no longer exist in their current form, mostly because the Internet has changed the landscape.
There are some industries that have adapted by offering things that you can’t get online- SCUBA shops offer diving lessons and tank refills, pool supply stores that offer to test your pool water for free, then make money by selling the needed chemicals.
The other way to survive is through government regulation, for example: gun stores and insurance companies both rely on government regulations to eliminated much of their competition. If an online company like Amazon sold guns, most gun stores would go under unless they could offer something other than access to guns. That’s why so many gun stores secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) support gun controls like prohibiting online sales.
The point of this post, which has taken me a bit to get to is this: The science nerds like Elon Musk like to claim technology, AI, and robotics will eliminate the need for people to work. That will never happen. If the Internet didn’t destroy retail, AI and robotics certainly won’t destroy employment to the point where UBI is needed.
1 Comment
Don Curton · January 14, 2026 at 11:41 am
Your definitely ahead of me – I’ve bought 4 and sold 3. The first two were prior to widespread internet use. I’ve had one good agent and several not so good. Here’s what the good agent provided – she knew the area better than we did. She would politely steer us away from, shall we say, high diversity neighborhoods, by using language like “good school district” or “low crime rate” with a wink and a nod. That’s worth the cost of admission if you’re new to an area. In addition, she had contacts in the industry. Need a home inspection? She could make a call and get an inspector out there that same day. And a good inspector (cause there are plenty who aren’t). She made sure the inspector walked the property while we were there so we could see what he found and what it meant. She knew local contractors and could get estimates for various repairs prior to you making an offer, so you would know and be able to bargain effectively. She knew title companies, who to call, who to avoid. All told, she made the process easier and earned her money.
That said, at this point I think I know enough to avoid a realtor if I ever need to move again. For every good realtor, there’s plenty more bad ones who’ll push you into whatever house they can find, they push for a quick deal to earn the commission faster, and they’ll move on.