That’s basically the headline of one of the articles in the weekly email that I got from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) on Friday morning. Well, the headline certainly doesn’t apply to this realtor!

The very short article references a recent LA Times article that features quotes from realtors like “You’d be foolish to give part of your salary away. I’m worth what I get paid” and “[realtors are] really digging in their heels because they aren’t selling as many homes.” Hmmm. First of all, if the realtor works the low end of the real estate market they are worth what they get paid but in Chicago there are an awful lot of realtors collecting pretty fat commission checks from $500K+ real estate transactions. As for realtors not selling as many homes these days…well, that’s not the customer’s problem now, is it? All that means is that there are still too many real estate agents out there.

Given the tone of the NAR article and the fact that it was only 158 words I couldn’t help but wondering if it was nothing more than a blatant attempt at price signaling – i.e. “don’t cut your commissions”. The original LA Times article, at 1547 words, conveyed a much different tone which I summarize as follows:

• Some real estate brokers are willing to discount their commissions but you have to ask – well, not always
• Agents are reluctant to discount their commissions because in this market they have to work a lot harder to close a deal
• Some discount brokers may underprice a house in order to get a quick sale
• In a related article the author points out that a discount broker may overprice a house in order to have a listing to attract buyers
• There are several special situations in which you might be able to get a discount – e.g. when the listing agent acts as a dual agent or when the broker is independent of a national chain (these chains usually take 8% of all commissions)

On the whole it’s a much more balanced picture than that presented in the short NAR article. The only peculiar thing I noticed was that in one article the author cautions about discount brokers overpricing a house and then in another article cautions about them underpricing a house. The truth of the matter is that any realtor, discount or not, can either intentionally or unintentionally overprice or underprice a house. I would not assume that it’s more likely to happen with a discount broker.

One last point: there were two glaring omissions in the LA Times article. First, there was no mention of service level. Many discount brokers offer a discount because they provide a lower level of service. Consumers should always find out how the realtor can afford to offer a discount real estate commission. Second, there was no discussion of the buy side, where buyers can get rebates of the seller paid commission from their agents. Let’s face it, for every seller there is a buyer (eventually we hope), so you can’t ignore this half of the equation and the savings can be just as substantial.

sorry but we need to test something.

Home sale activity also was up in the western Cook communities of Clarendon Hills (117 percent increase from a year ago); Hickory Hills (100 percent); LaGrange (100 percent); River Grove (75 percent); and Westchester (100 percent).

As a follow up to my earlier post on the direction of mortgage rates I thought I would share the gist of a post from the Calculated Risk blog that appeared earlier today on the very same subject – Expected Mortgage Rates. In this post, Bill McBride concludes that when the Fed stops buying mortgage backed securities it will probably only have a 30 – 50 basis point impact. That’s not too bad actually.

This has nothing at all to do with Chicago real estate but I decided we needed to get festive here for the holidays.

Background: I am a true eggnog aficionado. At the age of 12 I began what became a life long quest to unravel the mysteries of perfect eggnog. At first this was merely an entertaining hobby but it later became a critical pursuit as all commercial manufacturers insisted on adding nutmeg to their product, thus destroying the pure flavor of eggnog. Prior to this Borden’s made the best eggnog and they were the last to produce a clean recipe.

Well, I can tell you that trying to replicate the pure Borden’s recipe proved to be impossible but after years of experimentation I finally arrived at a recipe that I found acceptable – and surprisingly it was easy to make and ended up having fewer calories, less fat and cholesterol, and more protein than commercial recipes. Herewith is my recipe for easy to make, high protein, low calorie, untainted eggnog:

• One cup of store brand egg substitute -e.g. Lucerne Best of The Egg. Do NOT use Egg Beaters as this product contains salt and onion powder – YUCK!
• One cup of Edy’s Grand, Dreyer’s Grand, or Dean’s vanilla “ice cream” – just add ice cream to the egg substitute until you have doubled the volume. These are the only brands of ice cream found to produce an acceptable product because they are not really ice cream – they contain guar gum, which is essential to thickening the egg nog. Do not use the low calorie versions of these products and do not use real ice cream like Haagen Dazs or Breyers, as these aren’t thick enough. I am also an ice cream aficionado so I can go on and on about this product also.
• Add 3 – 6 packets of equal.
• Stir vigorously each time before serving to fully mix the ingredients.

When you are done you will have produced a product that contains 210 calories, 14 grams of protein, 8 grams of fat, and 25 mg of cholesterol per cup (that’s a lot) compared to 360 calories, 8 grams of protein, 18 grams of fat, and 150 mg of cholesterol per cup of commercial eggnog. And it tastes much better because it does not contain nutmeg.