Unless there are cities or counties with weird laws I’m not familiar with, you can always direct sell/buy. Due to where my place is, I get almost a monthly or bimonthly letter from a couple of well known developers in the area that usually highlight “no banks, no realtors” an they are looking to pay cash and handle all paper work themselves.
It seems that the grift in your case was every body’s else’s convenience but yours, and that convenience costed 6%
