Assuming people are not going to be confused which thread of the discussion that this is from, and seeing as nobody bothered to open another thread, let me take another crack at the "buyer's agency is free" argument.
Quote:
Originally Posted by austin-steve
Then suppose these two run into each other and agree on a price 5% below market. Neither has "saved" anything if they properly factor in the value of their own time spent to find each other. Sure, the sales price might be less, but that just means some of the cost of doing the transaction was moved off the settlement statement and instead absorbed by each party.
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This is true of anything bought or sold in our economy. When I buy a sandwich, I could've made it myself (thus absorbing the price and the transaction cost of finding a sandwich place), but the opportunity cost of my time is higher than the price, so I choose to buy it instead. This is an argument that sandwich-making has value, not that it's free. A buyer's agent has value too (which is why I'm hiring one). Most things that have value also have a price or a cost.
Note, when a business pays something to attract buyers, they consider this a cost of doing business. For example, a sandwich shop paying some dude to walk around on the sidewalk with sandwich-board signs. The buyers of the sandwiches do not pay that sign dude, and they do not write that dude a check. Is that sign dude's services free to them? No, the sandwich shop considers that sign dude's cost part of the cost of doing business, just like the rent they are paying on the building, and thus builds that cost into the price of the sandwich (it is "factored in" as marksmu put it or "business overhead" as Silverfall said).
Same thing for a buyer's agent. The seller builds in the projected cost of the buyer's agent into the price of the house, anticipating it as part of the cost of the transaction (and is thus more willing to lower the price if they find out that this cost will be lower). Who pays the price of the house? The buyer.
If the above sandwich shop claims that buyers of their sandwiches aren't bearing any part of the cost of the sign dude or the building rent, they would be misrepresenting how they do business, which is unethical. Any buyer's agent similarly misrepresenting their business to their clients clearly do not have their clients' best interests at heart -- which also means they are not the target audience for this compensation proposal.