Real Estate Agent Contractors: Helping or Hurting the Industry?

An increasing trend in the housing market is the crossing of many real estate agents and firms into the field of General Contracting. They continue to dig deeper into the housing industry. They once only handled the initial sale of property and the sale of a finished product. As time went by, they saw that they could steal that middle ground away from real contractors. Now, many agents and firms handle the general contracting and subcontract out the work to the men and women who do the actual work. Their knowledge is limited, but they depend on the real contractors to fill in the blanks of their shortcomings. The first problem in this situation is the amount of overbuilding they do as they try to maximize production output. I am not claiming that there are not traditional contractors that do the same, but for the most part a carpenter only goes out on a limb with one uncontracted spec home to fill the space between contract homes. Another problem is that not only have these agents/ firms stolen this job from the people doing the actual work, but they make them fight for the subcontracting jobs by pricing them against eachother until they are getting the cheapest price for the job. I have heard the argument that they are trying to keep the costs down, however they are sacrificing not only the lives of the gifted carpenters who aren't willing to undercut their trade, but the quality of the homes as well. You get what you pay for, and they only pay bottom dollar. I have seen too many good carpenters losing jobs to the real estate general contractor with the Amish crew making next to nothing. What message are we sending to our fellow citizens? Have we really become this cutthroat of a society that we will sacrifice people, careers, quality for a few thousand dollars on a $300,000 home? The banks are the real culprits behind the economic slump, but the real estate firms, evolved into general contractors, are the culprits behind a multitude of the housing market problems. Let's give the job of building our homes back to the actual home builder.