So you admit that the only value a real estate agent adds is due to the ponzi schmee nature of preconstruction real estate sales?
What a joke. You only make money if there is a transaction. I would love to hear you give somebody advice that the condo market is overinflated right now and buying anywhere is a bad investment. But no, there is no situation that you would give that advice. It's always about pushing somebody to buy or sell something.
You don't benefit really if somebody buys a profitable unit versus an unprofitable unit. Your interests aren't aligned, so why are you pretending they are? What value do you add in analyzing an investment opportunity beyond access to information that the real estate indsutry has a monopoly on?
Why would you sell a profitable unit to somebody else instead of just buying it yourself? You admitted you buy units in the buildings you sell. Do you buy the best units and sell worse ones to your clients?
Why are you advertising here? Buy a banner ad if you want to peddle your services.
The reality here is that this is a middle man adding a cut. However, to blame Condo George I hardly think is fair.
The developers (business people) have figured out I imagine that a good use of their marketing dollars is to get a target audience....realtors....who have the connections with buyers.
Since so many of the projects are 3-5 years downstream, investors make up a big part of the market. The developers could deal with longer times to sell and bypass realtors but they have obviously made a business decision that they feel makes sense.
Does this add to the cost....yes for sure.
Do I agree with it....I am not happy with the system.
However, I understand it. If I were a developer, I would certainly give access to the agent who brought me 10 clients or more.
Now I don't fault Condo George for posting here. He implied this was a source of "investors" for him. If you were him, I am sure if you could "advertise here for nothing" and further pick up some revenue...all the better.
Finally, unrelated to Condo George, it is my experience that agents are there mainly to represent their own interests unfortunately. I find the problem with real estate is that it is a monopoly like situation no matter what the agents feel and like most monopolies/oligolopies, they tend to favour the monopoly/oligolopy. For e.g. the 5 main banks keep making great profits vs. the US where they don't. But there there are hundreds if not 1000's of banks.