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There is no Realtor cost to YOU in BUYING a home

Say WHAT, Suzi??

Buyer's and seller's realtors split the commission all the time, all over the country.

And the 6% the seller pays the realtor could be a 3% price break to the buyer and 3% more for the seller if there was no realtor involved.

Not to say that realtors have no value. We could not have sold our house (vacant, we had already moved out of town) in the declining market of early '06 without one. But in the housing boom of 2002-04 many realtors were collecting huge commissions for almost zero work.

There is no direct payment from a buyer to his or her Realtor. Yes, the buyer's Realtor splits the commission, and that commission is built into the sale price, but there is no contract between a buyer and Realtor naming a commission, as there is between the seller and the selling Realtor.

Trying to do a FSBO is always a crapshoot, but there are possibilities for marketing your home on your own these days that were just not possible without the benefit of the Internet.

I'm already tracking properties on the MS Gulf Coast by way of a Real Estate website, so when we get ready to move, we'll have some good ideas about the value of one property compared to others.