[ CYPHER CODE #796 ]
When your representative gets paid more the more you spend, the system is already compromised.

[ CYPHER CODE #797 ]
Urgency in real estate isn’t accidental. It’s a sales tool designed to shut down verification.

[ CYPHER CODE #798 ]
A commission model that scales with price guarantees pressure, not advocacy.

BRIEFING

Grant here. I think a lot of us know that realtors and the entire real estate system are kind of a necessary evil. Want to sell your home? Well, you better hire a realtor. It’s sort of a process that many of us rarely question but just quietly know isn’t serving our best interests. But this short but brilliant “realtors are a scam” skit works because it verbalizes everything hiding behind the curtain. Let’s break it down.

The video isn’t exposing a rogue agent or a one-off bad experience. It’s spotlighting the basic structure of how residential real estate works. A buyer hires someone who is financially rewarded when the buyer pays more, moves faster, and asks fewer questions.

Most of the pressure buyers feel doesn’t come from outright lies. It comes from control over timing and information. “Another bid just came in.” “It’s going fast.” “You’ll lose it if you wait.” Whether those statements are true in a given moment almost doesn’t matter. After all, the buyer usually can’t verify any of it, and the agent’s income increases when the buyer reacts instead of pauses.

SOURCE

Tell me this isn’t how it actually works… pic.twitter.com/UBzyHZk1VL

— Dr. Clown, PhD (@DrClownPhD) January 14, 2026

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Cut through the noise, the spin, and the propaganda.

Now, there has been some movement as far as trying to reduce the amount of fees both buyers and sellers have to shell out to realtors. However, despite class-action suits, it looks like realtors are still going to be walking away with some pretty fat checks.

After the National Association of Realtors agreed to a $418 million class action settlement, sellers were told lower commissions were finally on the way. Instead, once the new rules kicked in in August 2024, the industry adjusted almost immediately. Agents found ways to preserve the same fee structure, quietly proving that the problem wasn’t a loophole. It was the system itself.

SOURCE

Under the old rules, home sellers were responsible for paying both their real estate agent and any agent the buyer brought into the deal. Often, that meant paying 5% or 6% in total, typically split 50-50 between the two agents, with each getting 2.5% or 3%. On a $500,000 sale with a 6% commission, for example, the seller would have to fork over $30,000, with $15,000 going to each agent.

Under the new rules, sellers will still have to pay their agent, typically as a percentage of the sale price. But buyers will be largely responsible for compensating their own agents, in the form of a percentage, an hourly rate, or a flat fee. Using the example above, a seller who negotiated a 3% commission with their agent and paid the buyer’s agent nothing would save $15,000. (In some cases, sellers might still want to help a buyer cover at least a portion of the cost as an incentive, but doing so would be voluntary.)

…

A key change in the new rules prohibited sellers’ agents from offering to split their commissions with buyers’ agents via multiple listing services (MLS), the exclusive databases of available homes run by local agent groups.1 But agents soon found a workaround, communicating instead by phone, email, and other means, The New York Times reported in March 2025.

“Many agents, now banned from making offers of commission to each other on private Realtor-only databases, are not adapting to the intent of the settlement,” the Times reported. “Rather than encouraging buyers to now negotiate rates on their own, they continue to press sellers to offer commissions of 5% or 6%, and then discuss commission splits among themselves.”

DEBRIEFING

So sadly, this “landmark” settlement didn’t resolve the problem. Instead, it actually just showed how deep the corruption goes.

On paper, the rules changed. Lawsuits forced reform. The National Association of Realtors paid $418 million and promised a new era of transparency. But in everyday practice, the system barely flinched.

Realtors still earn more when prices rise and deals move fast, and that’s regardless of whether commissions are paid by sellers, buyers, or quietly folded back into the transaction.

This is why the skit really hits, because buyers and sellers aren’t imagining the scam unfolding. No, it’s there, and it’s real.

NOW YOU KNOW

Transparency can’t survive a pay model built on urgency.