"Realtors have looked terrible all through this," laments Mosey. "Bull feathers," laments I. "I think with the hot markets all over the country and commissions are still high, that the effort and value of real estate services is being questioned on a broad scale, and the real estate industry is still in the mode of restricting information." "Double Bull feathers," say I. Why is it that those who never do their homework seem to speak the loudest, LOL? First let's speak about restricting information. In 1999, I emailed CyberHomes on three different occasions attempting to determine how I might place my listings on their site. Surprise, no response from CyberHomes. What was it they say about people who live in glass CyberHomes? I believe that those who criticize Realtor.com from the outside do it because, "they do not have enough to do." Example: I sometimes post my listings on as many as forty web sites. By the time I've finished its time to shave again. Little or no effort has been made by real estate sites to standardize their formats. For one site a photo must be 50K and the text 100 words, then for another the photo must be 150K and the text 250 words. CAN ANYONE HEAR THIS, THERE ARE NO STANDARDS, ALL SITES ARE DIFFERENT ! The navigation of the sites are different, the passwords are different, the use of the English language is seriously substandard resulting in multiple SWAG attempts to upload information successfully, and tech support seldom speaks understandable English. Wouldn't you think that the complaining parties would establish one site that we overpaid REALTORS could post a listing to that would then automatically broadcast and post the listings to the complainers sites. Concerning REALTOR income the facts are these. One third of our commission goes to overhead, one third to Uncle Sam, and one-third to the agent. In many large cities the average REALTOR only earns $12,000.00 per year. Also, there are no benefits including insurance and retirement. So where does this myth of high commissions gain life? It seems to gain life from the online real estate companies such as CyberHomes who would like to take the average agent income of $12,000 and place it in their pockets, without doing the extensive work necessary to earn it. These companies understand Internet economics but not real estate economics. In short, they didn't do their real estate homework well. Real estate is a mostly off line, time consuming, person to person business. We welcome their participation in the fray, but not their sorrowful dribble.

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