Just a few weeks until spring and hopefully we can put this dreadful winter in our rearview mirrors!

I know that my topics have been real-estate heavy of late and I would like this to be my real-estate swan song, if you will. With springtime around the corner, I would like to start anew, repress our whole moving experience and share with you these final thoughts–some unsolicited advice because, frankly, it just feels wrong not to.

Since pigs will be flying and Hell will be freezing before we ever move again, I think I can now safely speak on the topic of realtors without “offending” any that I may later need (to take thousands of our dollars). Well, I mean, I will offend them, but I won’t need them later.

I predict that, by the time our son is shopping for a home, people will recall the Realatorus Rex as a creature who once roamed the earth, great and mighty, driving their Mercedes and earning a living off of other people’s equity until the day people realized the Internet can do all the same things that they could do. 

To briefly remind you, we had contracted with a Re/Max realtor to sell our house in October 2009, and we only found out by accident about five months into the contract that our agent quit, which led me to believe that Re/Max would have taken the commission had our house sold while we were still under contract, even though we had no agent representation at all. Shame on you, Re/Max !

So we terminated the contract and decided to go without a realtor and went to ForSalebyOwner.com and, for less than $1,000, we sold our home by ourselves. I had to sign a contract stating how much I would pay a realtor who brought us a buyer and we decided on 2 percent, the minimum. We paid for the advertising, we conducted the showings, we did the cleaning, we made the time for the potential buyers, why on earth would we pay one single penny more than was required? 

So, we had a binding contract in place.  And even so, the realtor who did finally bring us our wonderful buyer, sort of demanded 2.5 percent. He badgered me a bit, saying, “2.5 percent is customary for people who sell themselves,” and I thought, “Oh, if it’s customary, then I will give you 2 percent and be a trendsetter.” Imagine if one tried to haggle down a realtor’s commission stated on a contract you signed?  It would never happen.

So, here is some totally unsolicited advice for buyers that one might consider to be a little bit "anti-realtor," because, it is …

If our buyers found our house on the Garden State MLS, which they could have done, and contacted us directly (not through their realtor), we would have had to pay $0 commission, and that could have been a real bargaining chip for the buyers.  It could have saved them a few thousand dollars if there was no middle-man. Their realtor knew nothing of our home when he brought them in, but he walked away with several thousand dollars after the fact because he walked them in the door and did absolutely nothing else, but became legally entitled to the money by taking their call and bringing them to our door. Had they come alone, they could have asked me to split the difference in what I would have paid in commission. For example, let's say I had to pay $8,000 to a realtor, they could have said, take $4,000 more off the price and I would still have been making out, right?

Don’t limit yourself to one realtor, you do not have to. If you see a house you like on the web, contact the selling realtor directly. This will give you a slight chance, and it is slight, that since now this realtor does not have to share his or her commission with your realtor, since you don’t have one, maybe he or she will drop their commission to 4 percent or even lower, which will give the seller a little wiggle room on the price since he won’t have to give as much to his realtor–just maybe. You can always ask, right?

And do this for each house you see, find your own houses on the websites and contact the selling realtors directly. And don’t assume that because you see a home on, say, the Weichert website, it is listed by Weichert. Weichert picks up all the listings from the GSMLS, so read the fine print at the bottom where it says "listing agent." And if you decide to buy the house, the listing realtor will get someone else to represent you from their company and you will sign a dual agency disclosure agreement ... it all means nothing. It just means that company is getting all the commission and not splitting it with the buyer’s realtor and, in some small way, there is a chance this could work to your benefit if the seller has to give less to the realtor.

And some unsolicited advice for sellers that one might consider anti-realtor, because it is …

I know there are some realtors out there who earn their bucks. They do mailings and newsletters featuring your home, hold open houses and truly commit their time to your cause. And you know what? You can do all those things, too. Yes, time and expense are involved, but is it $20,000 worth? That is a standard 5 percent commission on the sale of a home that costs $400,000. If your time is worth $20,000, then by all means, let the realtor do the work ... all of it. Let them sell your home. If you don’t have the time to commit to selling your house, that is what the realtor is there for and that is roughly the price. If, however, you need that $20,000, you have options.

If you are smart, or even moderately smart, and you keep a clean house in good condition with a clean property, and you can intelligently sell the selling points of your home, you can sell it. If you are not smart and think your house looks presentable after a night with Charlie Sheen, you probably need a realtor.

We have all seen the “For Sale by Owner” signs. And I know what you think: oh, those people must be in really bad shape they can’t afford the realtor commission.  And you know what? You are probably right. Can anyone? Don’t be turned off by this, especially in this economy. Selling by oneself means they have better plans for that $20, $30 or $40K. A college fund, a retirement fund or just a plain, "I-earned-this-money-by-not-squandering-my-equity-and-I-want-to-keep-it" fund.

But, you know, it is not the commission that bothers me, really. Let me get right to it, it is the absolute inflexibility of the realtors. A realtor can pressure you, downright intimidate you, to drop the price of your home to make their life easier, tell you that you are priced too high (and you might be) or that you will get so many more offers if you just drop your price but they will never, ever do the same. They can tell you that you need to paint, update your kitchen, add some curb appeal, so while your profits are plummeting to make your home an easier sale, they stand firm on their commission. What they get is what they get and you are not getting around it.

Why are they so inflexible?  I don’t understand why, when the economy has changed so much, how the realtors can stand rigid on their commissions? What about a scale? If you sell for this much, they get this much, if you have to drop it this much, then they get this much. How about a lower percentage for a lower-priced home? If I make the realtor's life easier by dropping my price, how about a little tit-for-tat?

I know, I don’t mean to spout simplistic solutions to things I don’t know much about, but it seems like, when everyone else is sacrificing, and the fact that just about any home that is for sale can be found on the Internet, where do they get off being so rigid in their fees? And while the world is bashing teachers, police and all government employees for perceived high salaries, why have realtors escaped this scrutiny when the housing market is in the toilet? How can we demand pay cuts and pay caps from government employees, people who teach and protect, but realtors remain untouchable and in business and unquestioned about the fact that property prices continue to plummet, but their fees remain rigidly in place? Yes, I bet many realtors are starving right now. So many people underwater, unable or unwilling to sell until things turn around, so, you have to roll with the times.  Adapt or die, as they say.

And I know, while realtors may appear to be self-employed, they do have higher powers to whom they report. Weichert, Re/Max, Century 21 are all big operations, and this flexibility has to come from the higher power, not the individual realtors themselves. So, I just have to ask, why isn’t it?

Realtors have a place in this world to serve the truly elite and the overworked. I am sure that someone trying to sell a house for $5 million doesn’t want the looky-loos popping in to see how the other half lives or an open house so the unwashed masses–or me–can come and get fingerprints on the Lladros. I am sure for homes like this, there is a screening process. Realtors can vet out the unqualified buyers before they even get in the door. And in a house with 20 or 30 rooms, that is a lot of Vanna White-ing, a lot of talking, a lot of explaining, a lot of knowledge. This is where the expertise of a realtor comes in to play. Or for the workaholic, working 15 hours a day, who is never home to show their home. Again, these people need realtors. 

But for people like us, the average Joes, looking back, I don’t even know why I considered a realtor in the first place. An ad on GSMLS.com sold our house, which we got hooked up with through ForSalebyOwner.com. We did all of our own showings and our lawyer helped with the legal stuff once we had a buyer. It took us 15 months to sell our house, five of which we were under contract with a realtor, 10 of which we were flying solo. In this economy, I would say that is about normal as many of the other homes we saw in the beginning of our search for our new home were still listed a year later.

So right now in Morristown there are about a half dozen homes for sale by owner, and one just sold for an amazing price. It was on the market just a bit longer than we were and they sold for only $6,000 under asking price. I was very impressed, and very jealous! But they stuck it out, rode the wave and got pretty much what they were asking for, minus a small commission. I am sure they popped a cork after that deal went down.

There is currently a house for sale by owner on Wetmore, an awesome street. If you are looking in Morristown, this is the kind of street you want to live on, close to town, pretty, quiet, lots of homes very representative of Morristown itself. If you are shopping, you should call them, price is $499,000. The kitchen looks to be a just a squiggle outdated, but there’s your bargaining chip.

So, don’t hate on the people selling their own home, they just have other plans for their money. Doing it ourselves saved us $10,750 in commission fees. That is a lot of money and it really wasn’t that hard, at all.

In fact, it was so easy, I had to share it with you.