I’ve been involved in many transactions, including 1031 exchanges and commercial properties. I’ve never had any problems. Maybe because I always used a Realtor/broker. 🙂

I always selected my own escrow and I find that it works much better than when the agents choose the escrow company. I also select my own title insurance.

I have nothing against Realtors. There’s a place for them. However, there should be room for discount brokers as well. For example if somone is looking to buy a relatively new house or a condo downtown, he might as well use ziprealty. I never used ziprealty before because they weren’t available; but I plan to eventually give them a try.

I just don’t think we should just say that because RE is complicated we should support a rigid, high cost system. We need REAL consumer choices.