Weekly Housing Trends

The big story

Mike Chambers/Ridley

When Mike Chambers decided to sell his home in Boulder, CO, no real estate agent he spoke to would budge below a 5% commission. That amounted to $137,500 on his $2.75 million house. “I didn’t feel like the service I was getting was reflected in the price I was being asked to pay,” he tells The Playbook. “So I decided to sell it myself.”

The problem? Colorado law does not allow sellers to post on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS)—the main hub where buyers shop—without an agent. So Chambers found a workaround: posting publicly on the Instagram account @realtorshateme.

The account went viral, and his home was under contract in 15 days. Chambers then took what he learned to launch Ridley: an AI-powered platform that helps sellers with MLS distribution, pricing, and more for a flat fee starting at $1,499. For $3,999, sellers get access to agents who partner with Ridley to support sellers and answer questions, earning $1,500 to $3,000 of that fee (in certain states like Colorado, these agents also help with MLS access).

Where are commissions headed?

Ridley has sold more than 200 homes since launching last July, saving sellers an average of $43,639. It’s currently available in 12 states, but it’s not the only alternative. Hundreds of flat-fee MLS services promise to list your home for $200–$2,000 with à la carte add-ons. But not all of these options deliver buyers as easily as sellers hope. Full-service agents still tend to net faster sales and fewer surprises; DIY works best for sellers with the time and stomach for it. And while the savings can be real, so are the trade-offs.

“If you list straight to Zillow or via flat-fee MLS products, buyer inquiries may get routed through platforms that monetize those leads by selling them to agents,” warns Amanda Orson of the AI real estate investing site Galleon. That means buyers who click on your listing may not even reach you, and/or you’ll get calls from agents trying to convince you to hire them instead.

Another option: Find an agent you like and negotiate—particularly if you’re an investor who can offer repeat business. “I have an agent who lists for me for 1% to 1.5% compared to the usual rate of 2.4% to 3%,” says Chad Gray of Cardinal Home Buyers in Raleigh, NC. “It is advantageous for both of us.”

Sellers looking to save can also negotiate who covers the buyer’s fees. “I’ll tell agents up front that their buyer is responsible for paying their agent’s commission,” says Ryan David of We Buy Houses In Pennsylvania. “The only potential issue is that an agent or buyer may not agree. But I’ve never had an interested party refuse to move forward in some fashion.”

Bottom line? “Commissions are 100% negotiable, even if an agent tells you otherwise,” Chambers says. And a lower fee doesn’t have to mean less support—many top agents want to stay competitive.

“Data shows that discount brokers do more volume and make more money,” points out Ryan Dossey of SoldFast. “Realtors may hate them, but they’re so busy they don’t care.”

And for the record, Chambers doesn’t hate real estate agents. “My problem with the real estate industry isn’t with individual agents; it’s just with the system,” Chambers explained on his Insta. “I think if Realtors don’t start changing the system, someone else will. We’ve seen this happen with Uber versus taxis and Airbnb versus hotels. When an industry refuses to evolve, an outsider steps in and rewrites the rules.”

      

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What's up this week

Realty check

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🚪One detail that can increase your home’s worth is the color of your front door. Choose wisely.

🛋️ Forget antiques. Collectors are now paying five figures for vintage IKEA furniture.

🏰 One of New Jersey’s most lavish mansions just sold for…$10.

You asked, we answered

Q: Are investors sitting out this slow housing market?

Realtor.com

Home sales have hit multi-decade lows; institutional money has also quietly exited the market. But small operators—mom-and-pop shops doing fewer than 10 deals per year—are busier than ever, snapping up 53,000 more properties than they sold in 2025, according to an analysis by Realtor.com.

With most buyers sidelined by high mortgage rates and prices, why are independent investors still showing up? Because, unlike during the pandemic, when open house lines stretched down the block, they’re now the only bidders in the room, which is nice if you’re angling for a deal. As Realtor.com economist Hannah Jones explains, “small investors are the stable floor beneath more volatile activity.” Meanwhile, as the BlackRocks hold out for fatter margins and everyday buyers hold out for slimmer rates, mom-and-pops just…keep buying.

Where they’re bargain hunting: Investors are sticking to affordable Midwest and Sun Belt markets with strong rental demand, buying at least one out of every five homes in Memphis, TN; Kansas City, MO; St. Louis; Birmingham, AL; and Oklahoma City.

How much they’re paying: On average, $330,000—a respectable 25% below the national median of $440,000. Here’s more on what investors are doing in this slow market.

Got a question about real estate? Ask it here, and we’ll answer it in a future issue.

Real talk

Daryl Fairweather/Redfin

What happens when an economist who studies housing goes home shopping? Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather has bought three homes, lost money on one, made a lot on another, and thinks her third is far from perfect.

Q: You’ve bought three homes. Tell me about your first. “It was 2015. I had just finished grad school, got a job in San Diego. My mom was having health issues and wanted us to buy a larger house for all of us to live in together. She pitched it as, ‘you’ll get into the housing market early.’ My mistake was I really wasn’t at a place in my career where I was ready to settle down. I’d only been at the job for six months, and I ended up quitting after a year. San Diego didn’t have a lot of great job options, so I moved to Seattle to work for Amazon. So I had to sell the house after just a year, and ended up losing money on it once you factor in real estate fees. I wasn’t living up to my economist rational mindset.”

Q: How about your second home? “We moved to Seattle in 2017 and bought a home for $860,000, a fixer-upper with a beautiful view of the Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains. It was also very out of date—weird tiki paneling in the basement, pink tile kitchen—so we put $75,000 into updates. We lived there for four years. Then the pandemic hit. We moved to Wisconsin, where my husband is from, and sold the house for $1.2 million. Since we’d renovated to make it more turnkey and home values in Seattle were going up anyway, we made a lot more than we put in.”

Q: Tell us about house number three in Wisconsin. “It was a three-bedroom for $360,000. We were hoping for a home office, but we had two kids at this point, so we had the kids sleep in the same room for a long time and now I share my home office with my daughter. It was a little bit smaller than what we were thinking and it wasn’t the ideal home, but we’ve made it work and we’ve gotten used to it, so I don’t think we’ll be selling.”

Q: What did you learn from these experiences? “In economics there’s a concept of ‘sunk cost,’ which is money you’ve already spent that you can’t get back. A lot of people won’t sell a home they’re losing money on because they can’t stomach the loss. But as an economist, I knew I couldn’t undo what already happened with my first purchase in San Diego. Same thing happened in Seattle—I had just refinanced my mortgage, which was pointless if I was about to sell and move. But circumstances changed, and it was just about making the best decision forward instead of feeling regret about something I couldn’t undo. Sunk costs shouldn’t factor into your decision. They’re gone either way.”

Click here for more on what this economist learned owning three homes.

      

Housing market of the week

Anita Verma-Lallian/Arizona Land Consulting

Anita Verma-Lallian scouts out land nobody wants and turns it into real estate’s hottest asset: data centers. “Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are running into a massive bottleneck: lots of demand for computer power and very little supply,” she explains. “That’s what makes this such an interesting opportunity now.” Here’s where she finds acreage that data center companies are dying to develop, why Phoenix could be the next Data Center Alley, and how anyone can buy in.

Getting started: “In 2019, a lot of companies were moving to Phoenix, and I saw so many properties that I knew would appreciate quickly,” Verma-Lallian says. “I didn’t have millions of dollars, so I went to my network of friends and family and started pulling together capital to buy $1 to $2 million properties where each person invests $50,000 to $100,000.”

Her market’s pros: “Power infrastructure is now the single biggest gating factor for data centers,” she says. “Phoenix is located near the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant, the largest nuclear facility in the country. And Arizona is largely free from natural disasters, which matters for these facilities.” Verma-Lallian recently purchased a 2,000-acre site for $40 million and sold it to data center developer Tract for $136 million. “And that was just with zoning in place,” she says. “Now, we’re working on sites where we’re getting the power infrastructure in place. And land with power is no longer selling per acre: It’s selling per megawatt, with prices as high as $1 million per megawatt.”

The cons: “About 40% of all data centers are getting shut down right now because of community opposition,” she says. “You really need to be strategic about picking locations where they’re welcomed. It’s just not the best use of anyone’s time to force a data center into a community that doesn’t want it.” In Phoenix, Verma-Lallian has gotten more pushback. But nearby Buckeye has rolled out the welcome mat. “The project we just did with Tract, at full build-out, is going to generate hundreds of millions in tax revenue for Buckeye—money they can use to build roads, schools, freeways,” she says.

Her advice: “Land gets overlooked by investors because it’s cost-prohibitive. The way I’d recommend someone get started is by being a fractional owner,” says Verma-Lallian, whose company, Arizona Land Consulting, welcomes accredited investors. “Find a developer you trust and get behind their project.”