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The past 2 weeks we have been flying around a lot of topics surrounding the “so called” discount brokerage model (and the 60/16 Minutes Piece that aired recently) and since then there have been some heated blog posts on it here @ the Condo Blog, Barbara Corcoran’s Blog, Inman’s Blog among others.

Well, in my own writings I thought to myself who has a unique place in this market, thats been through the thin & thick of it, an expert and yet can honestly open up and give a great opinion — The Queen of Real Estate herself — Barbara Corcoran of course! Below is her response posted on the Barbara Corcoran blog today.

The way I see it, the only thing wrong with discount brokerages is the word “discount”. Most people associate discount with poor quality, and that’s just not true of the many discount firms that have sprung up in the last 5 years.

There’s room for lots of different ways for sellers to sell real estate. And thanks to the Internet much control has been put into the hands of the consumer. Sellers today can employ any of the exceptional full-service firms to appraise, stage, negotiate, advertise and show their home. Many sellers are very happy to pay a full 5 or 6 percent commission for the full service; not everyone is a born salesperson. Some sellers are eager to do a portion of the work and they like to choose from the a la carte menu of services offered by the discount brokerage firms. I expect that more full service firms will begin to offer a la carte menus.

And that’s what always makes the Real Estate business so exciting. There’s lots of houses to sell and many commissions to earn. There’s one thing you can count on. The business as we know it today, will continue to change tomorrow. And that, for me, is what always keeps me interested.”