In coastal California the commission situation becomes ludicrously lucrative to the top agents. This week a home in my community sold for $25,0000,000. One of my friends had the buy side, another had the sell side. The buy side agent will be involved in ~200,000,000 in transactions this year, a down year. In this community there are plenty of transactions north of $20,000,000. He just did another and had both sides of the deal for $50,000,000.
At this level the commissions are usually 2.5%/2.5%. 5% of 25,000,000 is $1,250,000.
The irony? High end home sales require much less work/effort than low end. Far fewer showings. No open houses, ever.
I used to work at a major real estate company and I know very well how intent they are on holding the listing service monopoly together. Redfin, Zillow, etc were all bets on the opening of the listing services that misunderstood the regulatory capture of the National, State and Local Realtor associations. They ended up selling ads to Realtors rather than opening up a new way for owners to sell their homes directly.
> The irony? High end home sales require much less work/effort than low end. Far fewer showings. No open houses, ever.
That's true of most work. Software engineering is much less work/effort than a minimum wage job. The higher you go, the easier it is.
Shutting the project down gracefully doesn't mean it has to end, and it doesn't mean failure: shutting down the project gives invested community members the chance to fork it and demonstrate that they want to put the work in to run a natural successor to your project, and people will naturally gravitate towards the best fork over time. Afterall, without people with a vision leading it, it's just code.
Handing over ownership feels cleanest but it's rarely the best outcome (unless you're handing it over to a natural successor).