The best economically priced brokers are those brokers who broker tropical fish into the US. These brokers know the "ins" on bringing stuff into the US. They may also have a schedule which they can duplicate as one fee for multiple shipments (to include yours) to tag along with it. When you're talking about live-perishable items, it pays to know what you are doing. If you were bringing in clothing, shoes, food items, you can wait for weeks to get it through customs. Live plants, fish, etc. not so easy.

Here in my little town NJ, broker open / lunches do not work and are a waste of money. My old agent held one, 3 people came, 2 were from her office IIRC. We were talking to our 2nd agent (who is a broker) yesterday, he said he never knew we even had one. He then said he & his son went to one where they gave away money to a lucky winning agent; out of the two agents that went, the prize stayed in his family lol I really think it has to do with area. Open houses don't work here either. We had our 3rd on Sunday, 3 people showed. My agent was able to show one couple another house that day after it was over, so hopefully it was worth it to him. I also got feedback that another couple driving by that stopped loved the decorating; something people here did not like as I have flowers. FWIW, the house just sold. We've had 3 offers in the last few weeks, 2 this weekend before the OH. Once contracts are signed I will make a post.

I like to test-drive realtors. I've emailed a number of them through realtor.com and only 2 responded quickly (others were a couple days later, a week later by someone who was in the office that didn't answer my specific question, or never). I asked each of those 2 to show me a house they had listed and one that was listed by someone else, and then I pumped them for info on pricing, comps, etc. while we were together. One answered my questions better, provided me data to back up his "gut feel", etc. You're remote, so you can't do this in person, but I would think you could do some of this by phone. I'd narrow down your choices by looking at their listings online, or getting the office to send you a list ranking buy-side agents and choosing a couple top ones. When you call, explain a bit about your situation, tell them you're shopping for a buyer's agent, and here are the 5 properties you're considering. Assuming they're in different neighborhoods, ask their opinion of value of the different neighbohoods, and if they know the specific properties. Ask them to send you the comps they'd use to value those properties. Then see who's the most open and helpful and responsive and knowledgeable. It helps that you know the area and can judge their answers based on that. Look at the comps they send you and, if they gave you different ones, evaluate who was more complete/accurate with picking comps. And see if the comps justify the pricing they were telling you. It should be no problem to see 5 houses in one day, as long as they've got a few days to line them up. When we were househunting we hit 15+ in a day.

We got impulsive in the fall of 2005 when we realized that my good-paying job was not just for the year that had just ended, but was going on indefinitely. DH's dad had moved in with us in June, when his wife died. We loved having him with us, but he had to go to the basement to do laundry and down 6 steps to let our three dogs in and out, and at a very independent 86 years old, there was no getting him to NOT do those things. Plus, there was the only having one bathroom issue and the fact that we were using every square inch of that house before he moved in. So we got impulsive and went house hunting and within 8 weeks closed on a much more practical house that was 225 sq ft bigger (1450 to 1675) and had an extra half bath and a first floor laundry. Talk about minimum requirements! [We were very happy in the long run that we did not "win" the two-buyer bidding war on the slightly larger house with the finished basement, huge lot, and in-ground, heated swimming pool. It was 25% more expensive than the house we bought, and with what happened next, we needed the smaller mortgage.] With all of our stuff squashed into the old house, with peeling wallpaper I had lived with for 14 years because it was pulling off the skim coat of plaster and meant getting the room replastered, with a bathroom ceiling that needed replacement, with original oak floors that needed refinishing, and no room to put everything to do this work, we knew that we would need to move first, then do repairs and put the house on the market. We did this and got the house on the market March 1, 2006. I tried For Sale By Owner with a Realtor/broker back-up who would get a small fee and who got the house into the MLS. I offered selling Realtors a 3% commission. I had printed "Open House" signs with arrows that I posted around the neighborhood each Sunday, I had strings of colored flags like you used to see at used car lots and grand openings going from trees to the front porch and a big For Sale sign with info about the house on the front lawn. I baked cookies. Lots of lookers, no offers. I had the house assessed and he said we should UP our price! In June we hired a full-service Realtor. Over the months we lowered the price regularly. A year and a quarter later, I brought him a nurse I had met who wanted to do a rent-to-own with my house. We agreed to a price that was 84% of our original asking price. The nurse had recently gone through bankruptcy because of a husband with a drug problem and business debt that fell on her. So she needed a two-year rent-to-own. It didn't matter to us, her rent paid our mortgage! Since we had not sold the old house first, we had no down payment for the new house. Originally, we were going to do 100% financing with an 80% first mortgage and a 20% second mortgage on the new house. Then our mortgage guy came up with the idea of putting a second mortgage on the old house, instead. We would pay it off when we sold the house. It was a good idea, we thought, because it brought the mortgages on that house up to $25,000 less than it was appraised for, a good cushion, we thought in October 2005. When we got into the rent-to-own agreement, however, it was low enough that it meant bringing money to the table for the closing costs. In 2007 housing prices began to fall. In 2008, we all know that the entire economy fell. In late 2008, my DH was downsized into "early retirement" and it took him 7 months to get another job. No sooner were we comfortably back on track from that, when the nurse in our old house figured out that it was cheaper for her to buy a foreclosed house and lose her down payment on our house! That left us hanging in the winter of 2009 with an empty house in a housing market in which the empty house was now worth about $69,000 - precisely what I had paid for it in 1994 before replacing the furnace and ducts, kitchen, electrical service, water heater, concrete driveway, windows and doors, siding, trim, garage door, fence, porch, and adding central air and lots of insulation. Not to mention refinishing the wood floors throughout. Meanwhile, Dad had gone suddenly blind at the age of 91, then had prostate cancer, then skin cancer, and was bed-bound with daytime caregivers at our house. His favorite aide had left his employ and returned to her home state the summer of 2009. Her replacement was NOT comparable. Dad missed his Jenny so much, because Jen would go with the flow when it was okay and let him sleep, but force him to wake up and get food and drink in a gentle way that did not bother him, when it was necessary. She read to him and knew what he liked to hear. She read his moods well and could tell if he wanted to listen to a ball game on or wanted to rest. She kept a positive attitude even when cleaning up horrible messes from his hospital-acquired C-Dif. We could all see that he was declining without her. I heard through the grapevine that Jenny had her car and purse stolen and that neither she nor her husband had managed to get good jobs in the several months that she had been back home. After consulting with DH, I called and gave them an offer they could not refuse: a car to drive their menagerie of mammals and reptiles back to Mich and to use when they got here, shipping for their household goods, low rent in our old house. That way, we got Jenny back for Dad and had renters we knew, liked, and trusted in our house. Dad passed away several months later. Because he paid for unemployment insurance for his homecare staff, Jenny got to have free training and ended up with five health care certificates during our economic depression. She is working now, but her DH was hurt at work and is fighting for disability benefits and worker's compensation. They are still in our old house, so we have nothing to worry about as far as renters trashing our house, but they can't currently pay much. Okay, they can't pay anything, I'll admit it. It has been about three years that we have carried them. The husband has had multiple back surgeries and our Jenny is working as a nurse's aide and just not making a lot of money. But she studied hard and got her GED and all of those medical certificates, so she is trying. We don't have children of our own. I guess we got the boomerang phenomenon without having the first half where you give birth and raise the little critters, LOL! We were thinking that we might have to wait until my DH reaches the age of 59.5 and take some $$$ out of our retirement to finally unload this house. We have that second mortgage down to $25,000 from $40,000. The house is now worth about what is left of the first mortgage. It has been hard. Our new house had a expensive foundation disaster two years ago and needed a new roof last Christmas. The roof will be paid off at the end of this year, so we can be more relaxed after that. It does not help that my health has worsened and I am not working. DH is a saint! But now Discover is offering us $25,000 at 7.99%. We have to investigate it more, but if that is still being offered at the end of the year, we could use it to pay off that second mortgage and get the house on the market next spring. Incredible. We weren't sure when that could happen, but did not expect it for several years yet. In a couple, three years we might be able to have that Discover loan gone, too and be FREE! Buyer remorse. I don't know. Who knew that the market would tank so bad? I do like this larger house. My knees appreciate not having the steps. I agree with DH that it is a darned good thing that we did not get that house with the pool! We have thrown money around the past six years like it meant nothing, and I have come to the conclusion that this is partially true. As long as you can keep your heads above water, money is just a tool. It has allowed us to help our young friends have a place to live through their hard times. We will do it as long as we can. We will give them warning when we decide to do the Discover deal or not, but they will have to be on their own eventually. With luck, they will get Social Security to allow disability benefits by then. All the long timers here knew this sorry story. If anyone has read this far, I hope there was something to learn in all of this!