I don't really follow the proposal. Are you saying that there should have been just their realtor and I keep the 3% I would have paid to have my own representative?

I don't expect their realtor to act in my best interest if so. Our goals aren't aligned. I almost fell into a situation where the realtor I was choosing was the buyers representative as well, which a family member who is a realtor as well as my bank advised was a terrible idea.

If you're proposing that realtors are just half price then I don't have a problem with paying less for things :)

No, what I mean is more straighforward. Let's say your signed offer is for $600k. Literally $18k is being set aside for your agent to point out these (IMO rather minor) things, and do some other pretty minor stuff, very akin to what a tax accountant might do during filing season.

What if you could just buy the house for $282k and never had to have an agent? Perhaps you would have missed these issues. Or more likely you would have Googled for a robust checklist of things to look for in an inspection, and discovered them yourself.

This is a structural reimagining of things could be.

I think it could work in certain scenarios. I just would not want to be alone for a major purpose were something to come up. Some years my taxes are super simple, some they are more difficult. When it's difficult I hire an accountant to do them. Same with a house, but there are a million little things that people might not realize they don't know about a house.

For example my house had a situation with taxes where I had to pay investor rated taxes for a year since it was held by an investor previously. That's the tax rate I see when I look at the MLS. I would have said no to the house if my realtor had not told me the way it worked, and that they would fall off the next year. I don't know that a generic list can capture that since its specific to my locale (or not, I don't know how it works in other places and that's great since I don't have to be an expert on it).