[legion]

I've bought one house in my life. My realtor basically gave me the impression that she was showing up to get her commission. She showed us houses, but she offered no advice. In fact, every house was perfect in her opinion, despite major flaws in some. She wanted us to offer asking price on any house (even I knew this was not standard in this area). I had to basically bully her into even doing a walkthrough.

Was she worth 3%? Not in my opinion. For the level of help she provided, she was worth much less. I would have gotten the same level of service from some cut-rate buyer's agent. Of course, those don't exist in my area as all of the realty people here are politically connected (or are the politicians themselves).

She got close to $4000 in fees. I wouldn't have minded so much if she was in the least bit helpful.

Edit:

BTW, I'm not trying to say that all realtors are not worth 3%, just that mine was not worth 3%. Still, I believe that consumers would be better suited if they had a choice between "full-service" and "discount" realtors. The brokerage industry went through this transformation quite a while ago. Why can't real-estate?