In writing the article "Why Didn't My House Sell" I neglected to mention another trend becoming more prevalent though it has no proven track record of success, and that is higher-than-average co-brokerage fees paid to the buyers' agent and other inducements to provoke a showing.

In culling the expired listings I ran across everything from a 6% co-broke fee to a drawing for a free week's vacation in a beachfront condo in the Caribbean. And, as previously noted, these listings all had expired.

Some argue that most agents will steer their clients toward the homes with these type of inducements without disclosing the extra payoff they will receive if their buyers purchase. While I can't say this never happens, the implication that a majority of real estate professionals would violate their ethical fiduciary responsibility to their client over a few hundred dollars is repugnant. And it's also untrue.

For all the discussion and hand-wringing among real estate professionals about disintermediation - the elimination of the so-called middle man in transactions (and the real estate agents in terms of real estate) - we as a whole seem slow to recognize that the rise of the Internet and buyers' increased use of the web in searching for real estate is making such buyers' agent bonuses irrelevant. It is not the agents driving the bus, so to speak. It is the consumers.

I send properties to my clients (regardless of the co-brokerage fee being offered, incidentally) and inevitably my clients will have selections of their own that they found either through the property search on Dalton's Arizona Homes or elsewhere. To believe that I am the sole selector of homes and therefore able to guarantee myself these bonuses is ludicrous. (It's equally ludicrous to believe the Internet will eliminate my role in a real estate transaction, which is at the heart of disintermediation theory. Change? Absolutely. Eliminate? Never.)

All these financial inducements cannot compensate for proper pricing and aggressive marketing. The rest is just fluff.

(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton's Arizona Homes