The reason you must pay the commission comes back to the cartel nature. If you won't pay the 3% to each side as the buyer, then many agents refuse to show the s

The reason you must pay the commission comes back to the cartel nature. If you won't pay the 3% to each side as the buyer, then many agents refuse to show the sellers the house. I don't think they ask the buyers, they just don't tell them about it. Then when redfin in Seattle started selling houses for lower commissions, it again was difficult because of buyer agents not wanting to bring their customers to the lower commission redfin houses. Redfin I think experimented with only reducing the commission on the seller side, not the buyer side, to try to break the 6%.