The above photo was taken of my youngest son (center) and two playmates (identical twins) a year ago, shortly before their combined first birthday party. The 8x10 photo was displayed on the cake table. It's one of my favorite photos of him to date.

Free at last! Free at last... It's finally June the 2nd. And that means we can Ctrl + Alt + Delete out of our lives forever.

Rather than risk being sued for libel, since I seem to be Google's when it comes to all-things indexed (a special hello to everyone looking for "IDK my BFF Jill"), I thought we could rewind back to the 1970s for just a few and play a game. You fill in the blanks:

If you want the absolute worst excuse for a realtor in the Tampa Bay / Pasco / Pinellas / Hudson / Land O' Lakes / New Port Richey / Port Richey / Bayonet Point / Holiday / Springhill areas...if you want a real estate agent that will keep your home in MLS and on Realtor.com a full week after he's taken the lockbox off your property, left your key behind, and removed his sign from the lawn (not realizing you'd be showing up a week early to check on him)...selling agents that will arrive at your single family home a full thirty minutes late to their own open house (not realizing you'd be showing up that day to check on them)...a realty specialist who promises the following at in-person meetings and online at HomeGain.com

but then refuses to actually live up to ANY of those promises leaving you to spend money out of your own pocket for newspaper classified advertising, real estate sign "take me" fliers, and marketing mailers (including the initiative to go outside of traditional MLS listings and advertise on sites like Craig's List)...a seller's representative that says an Open House is useless and only holds one when it is demanded of them...an agent that lets their secretary go in the middle of your listing and then no longer answers their phone, does not return their voicemail (either to you or other buyer's agents), does not return e-mail, and eventually tells you never to call or write to check on your property activity again because they will contact you if it is necessary...

Well then by all means, this is the realtor for you! Fill in the blanks above and play his game.

You'll just wish the Hangman had won by the end of your contract.

At the request of our new realtor, I sent the following e-mail communication on Friday morning to try and get our home out of MLS for the weekend:

On Friday afternoon I received the following in return:

In the meantime, our agent and her assistant had been on the phone with the realty board to try and circumvent his MLS hold. Even with his claims of our contract ending at midnight on June 1st, it seems in MLS-land, listings end at 11:59 p.m. the evening before. Meaning our house should have been free to relist on Friday morning. However it wasn't. It appears he asked for a 24-hour extension "in case the seller wanted to relist the property with him". An extension we did not ask for. But one he was granted. One we were powerless to stop.

Because of this, we will not be able to list our home with our new agent until Monday. (Her office listing agent does not work weekends.) He knew this and he put the screws to us one last time. With glee.

He yelled at our new realtor's assistant on Friday, when she was simply calling to plead for his MLS release. He used abusive and foul language with her. Tossed around the word incompetent every fifth word, even though he was the one claiming not to know how to remove a home from MLS. And then when I wrote back to tell him everything was being saved and documented to fill out this form, I got this gem in return:

After that, I merely replied that any further attempts to contact me would be considered harassment and also documented for DBPR. (My new agent had already helped me word the complaint for his numerous and blatant ethics violations, and it goes in the mail tomorrow.)

That still didn't stop the man from calling my husband on his cell phone at 9:30 p.m. on a Friday night. (Which also happened to be our anniversary.) Why he tried to call that late, we'll never know. As soon as Todd realized who it was, he told him that I had said everything that needed to be said via e-mail and promptly hung up on him.

So yeah... This is what happens when you get so overwhelmed at the prospect of selling your first home that you don't do the research boys and girls. Don't be us.

And don't ever list your home or buy a property listed with ___________.

His power over us ended on June 2nd. But Google indexing? That's forever, baby!

Happy weekend!
-Robyn