This isn't a book written by a marketer who read about real estate. It's a plan built over decades of remodeling, brokering, and consulting — written down so any homeowner can follow it.
The author's real estate career didn't start in a classroom — it started on job sites. Home remodeling work began in 1988, long before any license hung on a wall, and that hands-on experience with what a house actually needs became the foundation for everything that followed.
In 1998, that experience led to a role with a large mid-Atlantic real estate brokerage. It didn't take long to notice a problem: agents were splitting commissions on deals they'd done most of the legwork on themselves. So the author started an independent brokerage — first named YPAY6, then rebranded to Goshen Valley Realty after pushback from other agents made the original name harder to use on listings.
As real estate law shifted to require more disclosure and oversight around repairs made during a transaction, the author went a step further and earned a General Contractor's license in 2015 — closing the gap between what an inspector flags, what a contract requires, and what a homeowner is actually told to do about it.
COVID slowed the contracting side of the business considerably, and the author eventually stepped back from active contracting and moved the brokerage license to inactive status. But the consulting never stopped. Homeowners and investors — including a current client managing property from as far away as Moldova — still rely on the same process to buy, sell, and maintain real estate without a traditional agent relationship, for a small consulting fee instead of a commission.
"I got tired of splitting commission on deals I was already doing the work on — so I built a way for homeowners to do it themselves, and I just help them navigate it."
The BookKeep the Commission takes the exact process used with real consulting clients and puts it in book form: how to price a home accurately without an agent's opinion, which repairs are worth making before listing (and which aren't), how to handle disclosures correctly, how to negotiate directly with a buyer's agent, and how to get to a clean closing without giving up a 5–6% commission along the way.
It's written for homeowners who are capable, organized, and willing to do some of the work themselves — not for someone looking for a shortcut with no effort involved.