While backing out in my 11 year old Jeep Liberty, I waited as a real estate agent passed in a new Corvette. Another agent nearby drives a Mercedes convertible.

I don't begrudge real estate people their money, the market bears it so it is theirs. My question is this:

Why does a market that happily provides agents a 3-6% commission for selling a home (again and again) cringe from providing architects the same commission for designing a home from scratch and overseeing its construction (just once)?

The only answer I have is that the real estate industry has marketed itself far more effectively than the architecture industry. Obviously, the market assigns far more value to facilitating the sale of a house than to actually designing and building one.