If you're looking to buy or sell a home, it's sometimes hard to not go through the route of hiring a real estate agent for your transaction. However, if you take a look at the underbelly of the whole real estate agent's way of thinking, you'll soon realize that it's not the wisest decision to spend your hard earned money on an unimportant part of the process.

When there's something wrong with your car, you want to go see someone who has a lot of experience in dealing with various problems with automobiles because you're confident that they'll know how to fix it. This is the same for doctors, lawyers, and any service. When people hire a real estate agent, they do it thinking that they're getting the same amount of expertise and know-how as they would hiring a lawyer or a mechanic, but most of the time this is not the case when hiring an agent.

Training to become a real estate agent is surprisingly simple and remedial. Real estate
"school" usually only lasts a few weeks, and then ends with a test that most people would not find difficult. In fact, if you have the time and money, you should actually go take the course to become a real estate agent and see for yourself. You'll be surprised not only at how easy the class is, but exactly what they teach you. And let me tell you, it's not how to get the best deal for their clients.

The specialty that a real estate agent brings to the table is not market knowledge or pricing structure. It's really how to sell YOU, their client. The main focus of seminars and group studies is how to get you to buy the home that they want you to buy, or how to price your home as high as possible so that they can earn the most commission. Agents study on how to bring you in as a client, figure out just how to maximize their commissions through you, and then when that's all set, to deal with actual properties and transactions.

Now I'm not saying that there aren't honest, hard working real estate agents out there. But when the housing market boom originated, more and more flunky agents got in on the game to make a quick buck. Now that the market is slowing down, you'll begin to see more sneaky mannerisms from these agents, so in my opinion, it's best to stay away from all of it and deal with everything FSBO.