For sale by owner not sold through brokers each year (as of 2004). MSN Money suggests that 30% of homes are sold without using a real estate agent. More than half of the homes sold in Quebec are sold without an agent. In the UK, the average commission rate is significantly lower than in Canada or the US. Properties for sale by owner are less common. By law, all sales of property have to be supervised and handled by an independent solicitor who acts as a mediator and holds the buyer's money until the purchase process is finished. In Australia, the FSBO is still
Representative agent group of heterogeneous agents to a representative agent is not just an analytical convenience, but it is ""both unjustified and leads to conclusions which are usually misleading and often wrong."" In his view, the representative agent ""deserves a decent burial, as an approach to economic analysis that is not only primitive, but fundamentally erroneous."" A possible alternative to the representative agent approach to economics could be agent-based simulation models which are capable of dealing with many heterogeneous agents. Another alternative is to construct dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models with heterogeneous agents, which is difficult, but is becoming more common