[arielweisberg]

I just purchased a home. Basically as a buyer the buyer's agent is paid out of the sellers end of the sale. The fee paid to the sellers agent really, but the seller pays in the end.

So... I can not have a buyer's agent and pay for it anyways. Or I can have an agent. The only advantage of having an agent is that getting showings is a little easier and you spend less time on the phone.

Houses have showings on Saturday/Sunday and offers are in on Monday in hot markets. There is no time to negotiate reducing the price in exchange for not using a buyers agent. If you have a complicated offer it might not get selected. People are waving inspection and financing contingencies in some markets.

I think it more or less comes down to buyers and sellers being kind of stupid. Heck... just about everyone I dealt with throughout the process was kind of stupid. The lender (at least the one I finally ended up with) and home inspector were both competent. Everyone else demonstrated they had no idea how to do their job.

I walked into so many houses with rat poop and dead insects everywhere. Houses were priced and bid on with only a weak correlation between the location and quality of the house and what people offered. It's obvious neither the buyers or the sellers knew whether what they were looking at was any good and major deficiencies were not being priced in. A house could be right next to an active commuter rail (not a stop, just the track) and it wouldn't be reflected in the price!