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Some day, years from now, you and I are going to be selling our homes.  I thought we’d have two options: sell the place ourselves or hire a real estate agent to sell for us.  My assumption was wrong.  I’m not sure if any real estate agent will share this stuff with you, but if you decide to employ a real estate agent, you actually have a multitude of options:

1. Exclusive right to sell or exclusive authorization to sell: This agency relationship is the one we’re most familiar with. In this contract, no matter who sells the property while you’re listed with an agent, the listing broker is entitled to his commission.

2. Exclusive agency listing: the broker receives a chunk of the change if he sells the property. But if you sell the property yourself, you get to keep the commission. Brokers are motivated by money, so while this contract seems like a sweet deal, don’t expect the broker to invest great effort. If someone sees his “for sale” sign in your lawn, that person knocks on your door, and you sell the house, the broker gets nadda. He’ll probably say ‘nadda’ to this contract, too.

3. Open listing: much like the exclusive agency listing, you get the commission if you find the buyer. You aren’t limited to one broker, though. In fact, you can offer your house to the whole town of brokers. The one who finally sells gets the commission. A competitive market! The problem, of course, is that brokers will be hesitant to work hard for you. They probably won’t spend advertising dollars on your property since anyone can sell the place. This guy, Joe, saw an ad for the house on Lolo Real Estate’s newspaper ad. Joe called his dear uncle Joe-Bob who happens to be a broker himself. Joe-Bob snagged the commission; Lolo Real Estate snagged the advertising bill.

4. Net listing: This final agency agreement seems the most intriguing. You decide that you want $1 million for your house. You hire a broker and agree to pay him a everything above $1 million as his commission. He’s motivated, baby. He sells your house for a whopping $1.7 million. Unbelievable. His commission is $700,000. The problem here is a misled price.  Did the broker know you could have gotten more than a mil for your house? Did he mislead the buyers into adding another $700k? Who knows! …many states outlaw this agency.

So go propose your dream sales pitch. No law says that a broker must accept a listing. He can pick and chose what he wants. Yet with the glorious $1 mil houses you and I will be selling one day, how could he refuse?

For those of you who read my article last week regarding my fall-out with my friend in Virginia, I am back to report that I spent my time off visiting a close friend in North Carolina. My friend Carrie lives in the “sticks,” about an hour’s drive from the Outer Banks, and her family confirmed my belief that people who are least able to afford life’s luxuries are also the most insistent on making their guests comfortable and meeting their every need. The principle of creating a hospitality savings account (see my earlier article) seems to apply to the majority of true Southerners, especially those who work hard for what they have and take pride in being able to share their modest, but well earned comforts with guests. Carrie’s mother told me that from the time she was a child, she was taught to make every guest feel like a “queen” even though her family was barely able to scrape by. For these people, hospitality is one of their greatest virtues.

Carrie’s family lives in the poorest county in North Carolina with the state’s (and for that matter, the nation’s) lowest ranked public school system. In order to offer their three children a chance at a better life, Carrie’s parents denied themselves luxuries many of us take for granted so that they could send Carrie, her brother and sister to parochial high schools and then to college. I was amazed at this family’s commitment to education, a commitment that on one level is even stronger than in the greater Boston community in which I grew up where 95% of the kids in our public high school matriculate at four year colleges. I was not considered successful for going to college- it was simply expected and to do otherwise was unthinkable. I would have only been a topic of cocktail gossip if I had gone to Harvard, and even Harvard is considered “normal” around here. Yet, for families like Carrie’s, getting into any college is a major achievement and their dedication to education is so pervasive because they can’t afford to feel otherwise. They have seen the alternative first hand, while the people I grew up around were hardly aware that most Americans were living a different reality.

It seems to me that the working poor and working classes are more conscious of the value of money than any other socioeconomic group. They put in long hours to earn their small paycheck. Consequently, they value every dollar much more than a single mother on welfare whose monthly government check reflects tax payer’s dollars and not her own labor. Carrie’s father works at a paper mill and while I was down there this week, he was working the night shift every day so I barely got to talk to him. However, he asked me to let him know if there was anything he could do to make my visit pleasant. The working poor may not know the ins and outs of CDs, 401Ks, and IRAs, but they do know how to use a savings account and they put money away for things that have lasting value like education and a comfortable, welcoming home as opposed to saving up for an Ann Taylor suit as I did once in high school. If I had grown up like Carrie, there wouldn’t have been any Ann Taylors within a 100 mile radius and I probably would have been using my earnings at McDonalds to help pay for my private school tuition if that opportunity was within my reach.

So the next time you lament about not being able to afford a new car or a bigger house, think about families like Carrie’s who are struggling to afford their mortgage and the rising cost of gas. When I offered to pay them back for the cost of the gas to and from the airport, her mother said “don’t be silly. You are our guest.”

In case you haven’t heard, the Alaskan oil pipeline just broke. Eight percent of the nation’s oil supply is now cut off. It only took a four percent hit to cause the energy crisis during the 70’s.

We have to find a way for energy other than oil. Let me amend that last sentence, we have to implement an energy source other than oil.

While it really wouldn’t end any oil dependency that America has, what about the coal-to-oil idea? It becomes profitable when crude reaches $35-$40 per barrel. We’ve got ethanol, biodiesel, and who knows what else is out there. So where is the next Rockefeller and what is the hold up?

There is a fortune to be made by whoever implements a solution for energy. I have a feeling that it’s going to be a young company that will tackle this. The only questions are when and what company? Who is going to be the Google of energy?

A couple weeks ago I wrote an article about why gas is cheap at $3.00 a gallon. Then when the article was linked to by another site, the person basically said that I must have invested in crude futures. While I hadn’t at the time and still haven’t done so, it might not such a bad idea.