It's only natural to pass these costs on to the consumer, it's the same thing with almost every other product you buy.

According to the article in 2015 consumers lost ~$9 million from this fraud vs nearly half a billion dollars in 2022.A Silicon Valley executive had $400,000 stolen by cybercriminals while buying a home.

Regulation Z does not apply to most commercial loans, and you do not have the same consumer protections as you would from a residential loan.

This negative position can consume years of cash flow to recover.

The agreement should last 4-5 days.If I don't like that home, and I think I want to engage a buyer agent for more in depth services over a longer period of time, then I will entertain other buyer representation agreements, but I will not agree to over 2%, which is the maximum recommended by the Consumer Federation of America.To be fair, if my needs required my buyer agent to show me 30+ homes, or preview them since I am out of town, or something else that took an extraordinary amount of the agent's time, I would consider more than 2%.

Additionally different builders negotiate differently with consumers verses agents.

Consumer protection does not include non owner occupied property.

Isn't that some form of Consumer Fraud?

I totally understand it’s cheaper to list it yourself, but if you have a full time job already, this can be very time and energy consuming.

If not, you are just flying blind and being a consumer, not an investor.