Real Estate Brokers: Do they inflate housing prices? - CEREG

commissions, without improving the quality of brokerage services. As the educational andexperience standards for real estate brokers are fairly low in France, it encourages highcompetition between brokers especially these last years since prices in the real estate markethave risen considerably. Moreover, competition with the for-sale-by-owner market is fierce;30% of real estate transactions are concluded without the intermediation of a real estatebroker. Concerning the remaining 70%, real estate agents have to compete against notary andlisting agents. In spite of the high level of competition in the real estate market, thecommissions applied by brokers are persistently high.4. Data and MethodologyDataThe study uses residential real estate data from the PERVAL database. PERVAL gathersinformation on real estate transactions outside Paris region collected by notaries at the time ofthe sale. The data totalled 10,610 residential apartment transactions from twelve cities inFrance (including neighbourhood distinction in Lyon and Marseille 5 ) registered in 2005. Thedata set included assisted (7,495) and non-assisted (3,115) home sales, housing characteristicsand information on both buyers and sellers. Assisted transactions are concluded with theintermediation of real estate agents, real estate developers, or estate agents.MethodologyWe aim to examine the effect of real estate brokers on housing prices in comparison withprices obtained by owners selling their own houses. Buyers’ and sellers’ have the choicebetween undertaking their search alone or with the assistance of a real estate broker. Asprevious researches have shown, the decision to use a broker and the price paid by buyersmay be linked. Indeed, this decision may be related to personal characteristics, hedonicvariables or location which could then affect the transaction price. Elder, Zumpano and Baryla(1996 and 2000) showed that higher income buyers are more likely to use a broker in theirsearch for homes. They also demonstrate that this category of buyers is predisposed to payhigher prices for their homes regardless of whether or not they used an agent. Such selectivity5 For Marseille there are seventeen categorical variables: one for each sixteen districts and one that gathers allthe transactions that lack information on the district. We kept the latter variable as even though there is noprecision on the location these transactions bring valuable information.10