It's a full-blown pity that it takes such a huge dollar amount to make this commonplace occurence a news event. (That's not a criticism of Realty Times, by the way...I laud the consumer-friendly coverage that Blanche Evans brings to realty topics.) My point though, is that the problem being highlighted here occurs every single day, in just about every city, town or village in the United States. If there was some way of making an accurate tally of the money that consumers lose as a result of real estate firms "representing" both sides of the transaction, the dollar amount would make the dollars in this situation seem like one grain of sand on the beach. It is impossible to serve two masters. Buyer and sellers have competing concerns in the real estate transaction, and attempts to control both ends of a real estate transaction only benefit one party--the company who purportedly represents both parties in the transaction! So, while I feel for the buyers who were taken to the cleaners in this case, I feel even more for the hundreds of thousands of consumers in the course of a year who are not given the full story by real estate companies when it comes to the oxymoron, dual agency. Jay Reifert, Excel-EBA Madison, Wisconsin

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