.- When paying with cash, you have fewer closing costs (no lender fees) and fewer holding costs (no interest payments).

And on the flip side, if I know that I'm going to be the only offer on a house as a buyers agent, I have a pretty solid chance of getting the service fee that I want.

Most likely because of their attractive flat fees!

I don’t take application fees until I have reviewed an application and proceed to step 2, the background check. 

Although you can completely finance the deal (0% down), you will still need some money for closing costs and/or the funding fee.

They know we're serious about late fee enforcement.

For pros, he challenges conventional wisdom and explodes sacred cows by exposing hidden conflicts of interests and mis-alignments that many in the industry won’t admit to.

The only other option I see is cashing out the 403b and paying income tax and 10% early withdrawal fee (I’ m 32).

However, the one constant in these emails is a request for the broker fee co-op and determining the offered co-op fee seems to be the motivation behind these emails.

You will not see $1.3M you will only clear the difference of that 25% ($325K) minus taxes, Seller/Buyer fee's, attorney fee's might leave you with $180k amount split 2 ways so $90K each.You could take out a Heloc and pay him to walk away from the home so you can turn it into your home plus rental.