It takes a lot to embarrass a former lawyer about the quality of some of the people he's working with now, but ...

This woman's accomplished that. An agent for something called {the lawyer in me decided to edit out the name of the firm, just to lessen the chance that these yo-yos will grieve me for disparaging them, or at least give me a defense] just sold 20 Fado Lane for $800,000, and I'm mortified by what she put up on the Internet as her contribution to that sales effort.

Fado's a great little street at the foot of Cognewaugh. Modest houses, but a tight neighborhood of friendly people with a real sense of community, with block parties, nice families and just generally, a good place to live. So this house should have attracted a buyer quickly.

$800,000 might have been about the right price for this home, but it was asking $919,000, and I wonder if it might have fetched something closer to that number, and sold in far less time than it took to move this (27 Fado, Steve Archino's listing and asking $949,000, is reported under contract, after 100 days), if the agent had bothered to keep her Instamatic in her glove compartment and called in someone who had a real camera and knew how to use it. The commission on an $800,000 sale is $40,000: that's $20,000 for the agent and her broker to divide as they see fit. They couldn't spend, say, $500 for a real photographer?

Sad.