[nicholasjarnold]

I used an attorney specializing in real-estate to represent our side of the house during my first home purchase. We subsequently reduced the bid by 3% with an explicit note about why (no buyer's agent commission to pay). The seller's agent was a broker and was apparently motivated because they accepted our deal along with fixing a list of little items uncovered during inspection. We paid our lawyer a $2-3k iirc.

I'll never know if that broker got 6% from the seller or took 3% to close the deal, but our strategy worked: I paid 5 figures less for the home than what was being asked for at a time when houses were selling for over asking price in this area.

It's worth a shot I guess. 2 warnings: Some seller's agents will get very pissed at you (b/c this and other things like Redfin's 1% is disrupting their cash cow and they're not stoked about it). It might be difficult to find an attorney since most RE attorneys focus on commercial deals.

[cgh]

Same, we used a notary public for most of the paperwork and a lawyer for a bit of it. I think I calculated that we saved around $20,000.