Can someone tell me why we a real estate agent deserves 3% of my income in 2017? I do realize that there are some tremendous ones that take care of alot of things. However, my experience has been that most of them can be "slaps". I found a home and needed someone to open it up for me, "stamp" that'll be 3%. I call this place and that place, meet up with this person and that person to make sure everything is going smooth with the house. He comes by for an occasional cameo appearance. How hard is it to find a good real estate agent that will negotiate their commission? If they drive me around all over town and I've looked at dozens of places over a few weekends and I am a pain in the butt through the process of closing I get it. For the educated buyer that can find their own place, they drive through and around the area to make sure it checks out and simply needs someone to open the door that is terrible to then turn around and charge 3K, 6k, 9k, or 12k when the amount of work hasn't changed at all. Please correct me if I am wrong.