I didn't mean to come off as snarky as I did. My apologies.

Yeah. You jumped to the defense of real estate agents with this story in which your agent (who you're just super happy with) basically conned the person you bought your house from

There was no conning. He told them flat out: you have a deal in place with people who have both the financing and a certified cheque ready to go and you're about to pass them up for someone who may or may not actually make you an offer. Taking our offer would widely be considered the best and safest way to go. That other offer was contingent upon the person getting approval from their spouse to move forward; hardly a confirmation. We went through a very similar process when we had a deal on the table to buy our house almost immediately after putting it on the market, only to have the buyers drop out at the last second for lack of financing. It's a very common scenario. Besides; my wife and I both took a day off work to get the offer put together (certified cheque and pre-approval) while we waited for an answer (there were two other lower offers as well).

somehow oblivious to the fact that your own story is exactly why people like this Aussie guy want nothing to do with realtors

Ok. Take the realtors out of my story. Both my wife and I are now out of pocket on the expenses involved with the process and we're probably not going to get the house...yet again. I say 'yet again' because we had already lost out on two other properties to bidding wars involving 7 and 9 other parties respectively; again, more incurred expenses with no results. I'll say it again; we looked at over 60 homes (Toronto is a difficult and hot market). In Ontario, the owner doesn't need to release the value of the other offers either (you can imagine what that means). So, should we have hated the selling real estate agent for fostering a bidding war that fetched 120% over asking or chalk up the experience to the reality of living in a hot market?

That's life. You move on and so we did.

Your anecdote and attitude seems to be coming from a place of either oblivious stupidity or prank call style troll humor.

I told you my positive experience with my realtor. Take it any way you want. All I know is that we wouldn't have had the time nor the patience to do even one quarter of the legwork that he did. I don't know where you're from, but here - in Toronto - it's a goddamn battle to find "your" home. Our realtor made it easier and we paid him for it. Hey; he even took $1000 off his commission when we and the eventual buyers came to an impasse on the final value. I had no complaints.