When Ashwin and Poonam Jain began looking for a larger home for themselves and their two children in San Ramon earlier this summer, they quickly realized they were spending hours looking at homes online, evaluating school districts and compare sale prices nearby listings.

Although they had both appreciated the help of agents in the past, they felt, as experienced buyers, that they didn’t need the same support this time around. So why would they pay tens of thousands of dollars to an agent to come in at the end and write an offer?

“As the buyer, we do all the work,” Ashwin said. “Sometimes we found it difficult to see: where is the added value of a broker?

For years, home buyers could largely ignore what their agents were charging because their fees — traditionally around 2.5 percent — were covered by the seller. Nationally, real estate commissions are an estimated $100 billion business. For a Bay Area median-priced home selling for $1.27 million, a 2.5% fee would amount to $31,750.

But earlier this year, the National Association of Realtors, in response to a lawsuit, changed its commission guidelines to settle claims from dozens of home sellers who said the rules required them to pay both their agent and the buyer’s agent.

Now, buyers also can’t rely on sellers to pay their agents’ fees. Since the the real estate group’s new rules debuted in Augustbuyers had to sign agreements with their agents promise to pay a certain commission if the seller does not offer one. Many sellers stick to tradition and still offer buyer agents a 2.5% commission – but faced with the option of paying themselves, buyers like Jains are wondering if an agent is worth it .

The Jains began to look for alternatives. An Oakland company, TurboHome, has promised to use artificial intelligence tools to help them review a home’s information and compare sales of nearby properties. When the time came to make an offer, a TurboHome agent, a real human being, was there to help with negotiations and closing.

The costs? If the seller offered a buyer’s agent a commission, TurboHome would take $10,000. Anything beyond that, the Jains guarded. If the seller did not offer commission, the Jains would pay the costs out of their own pockets.

After contacting TurboHome’s agent, the Jains submitted an offer on a five-bedroom, four-bathroom home in San Ramon valued at $2.75 million. Based on the sale price of recent homes, they made an offer lower than the ask, $2.65 million. A traditional agent would have collected $68,750 in fees, but with TurboHome, the Jains would have recouped a $58,750 credit – money they could use to increase the offer if the sellers countered or pay a deposit if they did. they were winning.

Ultimately, the house received two offers over $3 million. The sellers asked if the Jains wanted to increase their offer, but it was more than they were willing to pay.

Even though they lost the house, the Jains feel satisfied with the experience: Ashwin and Poonam are in no hurry and they knew how much they were willing to spend. TurboHome never pressured them to offer more, Ashwin said.

“Agents always have reasons to make an offer rather than ask…to inflate a number and encourage a potential buyer,” Jain said. “But it is also in their interest that the transaction takes place.”

This is a flaw in the traditional relationship between agents and buyers that TurboHome seeks to fill, Ben Bear said: co-founder of real estate startup BuildCasawhich operates TurboHome.

“Our only motivation is to win the house, because we don’t win more when the buyer pays more,” Bear said.

TurboHome is far from the only service attempting to disrupt the home buying process. San Francisco startup Modern Realty is also building a home buying tool that can answer many of home buyers’ simple questions with an artificial intelligence chatbot, then connect them to a human real estate agent to submit an offer . And since 2006, San Jose-based ShopProp has offered a flat-rate model — starting at $4,995 for buyers and going up to $7,995 for additional tours and deals.

Chris Robell, a retired technology executive, used ShopProp last year to sell his house in Palo Alto for $2.56 million and buy a new one in Redwood City for about the same price, paying total costs of approximately $10,000. He estimates he saved $120,000 in agent commissions.

“This is a high commission structure in the dominant industry,” Robell said. “It’s worth paying something, but $100,000 for a house is ridiculous.”

With his supercharged real estate pricesThe Bay Area is fertile ground for low-cost brokerages.

The National Association of Realtors points out that real estate agent fees have always been negotiable. Many buyers, especially first-time buyers, say they appreciate having an agent guide them through the process. But the settlement has given many buyers a new awareness of exactly how much this advice costs and that there are cheaper options.

But the home buying industry is difficult to disrupt, with many of its practices dictated by the National Association of Realtors and its affiliated state associations. It’s also an industry that relies heavily on networking: agents work hard to build a reputation and like to make deals with other agents they trust.

For all of their AI tools, Modern Realty and TurboHome still rely on real estate agents. Part of the reason is that buyers like knowing there’s a real person there to help them close their deal. But it’s also because seller agents want a human contact on the other end of the transaction.