LETTER: The headache of high real estate commissions

Your Wednesday article on real estate commissions made me immediately think: Do we need a realtor to sell our homes?

My experience with having a real estate agent sell our previous homes in the valley begs me to wonder why I needed an agent. They did nothing to promote the sale of my house other than planting a sign in the front yard, which I can do. My house sold itself when the buyer walked in. You either love it or hate it. The paperwork they try to fill out was bungled to the point of great frustration and cost to me. Do I really want to pay someone to screw up my sale just to end up paying thousands in realtor fees for items in the paperwork that the buyer should have paid? That’s my experience. I’m sure I’m not alone.

Then, to add insult to injury, I read further that commissions in the United States are substantially greater than the United Kingdom (1.3 percent), Australia (2.5 percent) and the Netherlands (2 percent). With homes prices escalating daily, these commissions are an insult to all of us.