Do I need a realtor to buy a house? Legally, no. No state makes you hire a buyer's agent, though a few require an attorney to handle the closing, which is a separate role. Practically, the answer for almost every buyer is yes, with two conditions the industry does not always say out loud. Hire deliberately, because the spread between a great agent and a weak one is enormous. And understand that representation is never free: after the NAR settlement its cost is negotiable, in writing, and worth paying when you hire well.
Real estate has one of the lowest barriers to entry of any profession attached to a six-figure transaction. In most of the country you can be licensed in six to ten weeks for a few hundred dollars, and nothing requires a single supervised transaction before you represent a buyer on the largest purchase of their life. The industry's own numbers make the point better than we can:
(Membership, sales, and income figures reflect NAR and BLS data as of this episode, 9/17/2024, and move with the market.)
An NAR study put it plainly: the delta between great real estate service and poor real estate service has become too large, because the entry requirements are unacceptably low. That sentence is the honest answer to this article's question. The decision that actually matters is which agent, because picking at random gets you the long tail.
Portals do the finding now; nobody disputes it, though knowing where the genuine deals actually hide is a different skill from scrolling listings. The job starts after the finding: pricing against comps an outsider misreads, contract mechanics, sequencing the offer, inspection, and appraisal negotiations, and protecting the deadlines that protect your deposit. Consider that Josh holds a California real estate broker license and could have represented himself when he and his wife bought a place in a desert golf community. He hired a local agent anyway. The development had 850 units, 27 holes of golf, and real price differences by floor plan, orientation, and which side of the wash a unit sat on, none of it visible in a listing. She also carried the difficult inspection negotiation with the seller. The fee bought knowledge he did not have and a fight he did not have to run himself.
This is the most common money-saving idea we field on the live show, and it misunderstands whose agent that is. The listing agent represents the seller. Under dual agency, where it is even legal, the best you can hope for is a mediator splitting differences, and in practice the loyalties tilt hard toward the seller who hired them. You wanted an advocate and bought a referee. The savings rarely materialize either: an agent absorbing the buyer side's work and liability expects to be paid for it, and the level of service tends to track what you pay.
Everyone knows an agent. The question is whether that agent has closed transactions recently, in your market, on the current forms. Contracts and disclosure requirements changed materially with the 2024 settlement, and we watch licensed, working agents ask basic questions about the new paperwork in industry chat groups every week. A wrong checkbox is real money: we have seen a contract where the wrong box on the title-policy line handed the buyer a bill the seller customarily pays, because the agent did not know the local custom. Loyalty is a fine reason to send someone a referral. It is a bad reason to hand them a six-figure negotiation. If a friend or relative truly is an active, local, experienced agent, hire them on that evidence, exactly as you would a stranger.
Between the two of us we have 55+ years in this business, and the value of the good ones shows up in the same places every time:
The savings from going unrepresented are visible and immediate. The costs arrive later: the overpay, the missed defect, the forfeited deposit, the escrow that collapses.
Buyer representation now starts with a written agreement stating the fee before you tour homes. The fee is negotiable. The seller may agree to pay some or all of it as a term of your offer, and often still does, but nothing guarantees that, and we will never tell you representation costs nothing. We wrote a full breakdown of who pays the buyer agent commission and the four ways real deals handle it. Budget for the fee, negotiate who funds it, and spend it on someone worth it.
You are allowed to buy without one, the same way you are allowed to represent yourself in court. With this much money on the table, the honest question is whether the person negotiating for you is great at the job, and the industry's own numbers say most licensees are not doing it often enough to be great. Hire on evidence, pay the fee knowingly, and good representation tends to return it in price, repairs, and deals that survive to closing. And if you are a step earlier than hiring anyone, still working out whether you are ready to buy at all, our free two-minute readiness quiz tells you where you stand.
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Find my agent →Legally no; no state requires a buyer's agent, though some require an attorney at closing. Practically, almost every buyer benefits from one, because the purchase involves pricing judgment, contract mechanics, and three or four separate negotiations against professionals. The honest framing: representation costs money, the fee is negotiable and put in writing up front, and a skilled agent tends to return it in price, repairs, and deals that survive.
You can where dual agency is legal, but understand the trade. The listing agent's client is the seller, so at best you get a neutral mediator instead of an advocate, and in practice loyalty tilts toward the seller who hired them. You also rarely capture the savings, since an agent taking on the buyer side's work and liability expects compensation for it. If you go this route, do it knowing you are unrepresented in the negotiation.
Usually less than you expect, and sometimes you lose money. Sellers do not automatically cut the price by the amount of an unpaid buyer-agent fee, and an unrepresented buyer negotiates pricing, repairs, and appraisal gaps alone, where mistakes cost thousands. The visible saving is the fee; the invisible costs are the overpay, the missed defect, and the deposit put at risk by a blown deadline.
There is no set rate. Since the 2024 NAR settlement changes, the fee is negotiated between you and your agent and stated as a specific number in a written representation agreement before you tour homes. The seller may agree to pay some or all of it as a term of the deal, and many still do, but that is a negotiation, so budget as though you might pay it yourself.
Look for recent, personal closings in or near your target market, a few years in the business, and reviews in volume with consistent themes rather than a handful of five-star notes from friends. Ask for references from recent transactions the agent personally handled, and ask how they stay current: coaching, masterminds, a mentor. Then interview them with direct questions and judge how they answer under mild pressure.
It is a bad default. The relationship is not the qualification; recent transactions in your market on the current contract forms are. Paperwork and compensation rules changed materially in 2024, and an agent who does one or two deals a year can make box-checking mistakes that cost you real money. If your friend happens to also be an active, local, experienced agent, wonderful. Verify that the same way you would verify a stranger.