a do-it-yourself home purchase might be pricier than a real estate agent’s compensation in the long run.
This might surprise you:
Percentage of Transactions Done by Realtors • According to the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 91% of home sellers sold with the assistance of a real estate agent — meaning only about 5% were For Sale By Owner (FSBO) transactions, the lowest on record. This implies that a very large majority (≈90%+) o y (≈90%+) of residential home sales involve Realtors or licensed agents on the seller’s side. • On the buyer side, NAR data show around 88% of buyers purchased their home through a real estate agent or broker — again pointing toward agent-assisted transactions on both sides of the sale. On most home sales, there is a listing agent (the agent engaged by the seller to sell the property) and a selling agent (the agent who introduces the eventual buyer into the transaction). The selling agent is sometimes called the “buyer’s agent” because he or she is often working on a certain buyer’s behalf, and it’s easier than explaining that the selling agent is not the listing agent but really the buyer’s agent. There are some real estate agents that market themselves as “buyer’s agents,” “exclusive buyer’s agents,” or “buyer’s representatives.” These real estate agents have chosen to make a business of finding homes for prospective buyers and handling the negotiations and transactions attendant to the purchase. These agents want to accentuate the reasons a buyer shouldn’t go directly to the listing agent when they purchase real estate.
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