Published in Realtor Magazine Online:

Study: Discount Brokers Take Longer to Sell Homes

(January 26, 2006) — Homes listed by discount brokers take about five days longer to sell than those listed by full-service real estate brokerages and are 12 percent less likely to sell at all, according to a study by Penn State’s Smeal College of Business and the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Abdullah Yavas, research director of the Institute for Real Estate Studies at Smeal, and Ron Rutherford, professor of building and development for UT, examined nearly 300,000 single-family home listings in several Texas MLSs. The researchers concluded that although discount brokers were slower and less reliable, using one had no affect on the price for which the house sold.