Real-estate agent commission structure and sales performance

We study the transaction prices and sales times of a new type of real-estate agent, the “internet agents”, who operate mainly online. Competing on the same Dutch online listing platform, these internet agents charge a low fee up front and leave the viewings to the sellers. Using a nation-wide dataset of residential real-estate transactions, we find robust evidence that sellers who use internet agents obtain higher prices and sell faster but they are also more likely to switch to a traditional agent or fail to sell than sellers who use traditional agents. These results are consistent with a model in which sellers learn over time about their skills and where good sellers benefit from and sort at internet agents. Some of our findings also support the view that real-estate agents have market power.