David HirschfeldFounder & CEO, Tekyz Inc. · Founder & CEO at Tekyz Corp | Software Startup Acceleration, AI Experts, Workflow Automation, Board

Hidden fees in real estate aren’t obvious

2 Dec 2025 · 1 min

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1:00

In this monologue, a real estate agent reveals that major online real‑estate platforms such as Redfin, Realtor.com, and Zillow charge agents hefty client‑referral or marketing fees—typically 30% to 50% of the total commission—when the agent is connected to a buyer or seller through the platform. These fees can amount to $5,000‑$20,000 or more per transaction. The speaker, drawing on personal experience as a premier agent for these platforms, argues that the costs are opaque to consumers and are ultimately passed on to homebuyers and sellers, making an already expensive process even more costly. The speaker expresses moral discomfort with the lack of transparency and the financial burden placed on consumers.

Chapters

And one thing that people don't know is that when you go to a middleman real estate platform like Redfin, Realtor, and Zillow, and you look for a home and then you ask to be connected with a real estate agent, that when you close on your home, that real estate agent is paying that platform what's called a client referral fee of 30%, 40%, 50%, or more of the total commission. Now, this amount can be $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 or more. And since I've worked with these platforms as one of their premier agents, and I, it's always felt wrong to me that the home buyer or home seller had no idea that this is how the process works. It felt wrong to me that even though it's their business that's being sold, they don't get a share in any of that money whatsoever. And it also bothers me that these exorbitant marketing and client referral fees that are being charged by these middlemen, that those are actually being passed on to the homebuyer, home seller, right? They're the ones that are paying that. So we're already taking a very expensive process and we're making it even more expensive.