> The buyer is paying the agent in the addition to the sale price. Well I guess this gets a bit philosophical. Who pays the cost (the actual payment goes from

> The buyer is paying the agent in the addition to the sale price. Well I guess this gets a bit philosophical. Who pays the cost (the actual payment goes from the buyer to the seller’s lawyer which remits a portion to the agent) differs from who bears the cost (called the “incidence” [0]), which depends on the price elasticity of demand versus the price elasticity of supply, and this burden obviously shifts depending on the cycle of the housing market. You are correct that the incidence would fall to the buyer for quite some time now but perhaps this is shifting now. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence