Taking the Agent Out of the Sales Process

I thought I had grown benumbed to Robert J. Bruss’ advice on how “you’d be a fool to try to sell your home without an agent.” But I have to comment on his latest installment (“Real Estate Q&A;,” Aug. 22), which dealt with a couple who felt the process of selling their home should have taken no more than one week.

While they ended up selling for full price and saved the 3% commission they would have paid to a sales agent, it took them almost a month. They had to deal with some flaky prospective buyers. Some people even wanted to negotiate on price. What a nightmare!

If you assume their home sold for a relatively modest $250,000--a typical sales price for a Southern California home--their savings was $7,500.

Now, maybe a $7,500 gain on a three-week investment of time seems inadequate to a real estate agent or a syndicated columnist. But to most of us out here in the real world, however, Bruss’ latest column was an indication of how much you could save by taking the agent out of the sales process.

SCOTT MYRE

Thousand Oaks