Brian. As a probate lawyer I sold a lot of real estate out of estates. It quickly became clear that the compensation method for agents encouraged them to do many sales quickly, rather than get the top price for any individual client.

Where I live, no agent ever got 5% out of me, particularly when residences were selling within hours. I would open negotiations at 2%. The leverage was that there a lot of agents vying for those listings and a fair number of them were living on ramen.