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I’ve always had a distrust of real estate agents and mortgage brokers. They’re used car salesmen selling houses and loans instead of lemons. They’re always so slick and do the best job of pretending to give a shit about their suckers when they’ll do just about anything to get them to sign on the dotted line. You see their plastic faces pasted on bus stops, door hangers and various other forms of litter. What the hell does your ugly mug have to do with buying a house? I smile inside anytime I see that someone has mustached their blown-up image.

Thanks to a wonderful thing called the Internet, agents’ control of real estate listings (the secret to their power) is slowly starting to weaken, but not without a fight. This is not new news; it’s been happening to other industries for quite some time.

The book Freakonomics proved statistically that real estate agents aren’t following the golden rule: “…a real estate agent keeps her own home on the market an average of ten days longer and sells it for an extra 3-plus percent, or $10,000 on a $300,000 house.” Basically they make money off of others’ ignorance, which isn’t bad because that’s what most industries thrive on, they just thrive a lot.

I’m not foretelling the demise of real estate agent as a profession; I’m just foretelling a paycut. And once I’ve sold enough organs to buy a house in California, I’m going to look for a For Sale By Owner posting on craigslist.