First purchase, no agent yet: full-service, reduced-fee, or hire the pieces separately?

Reduced-fee, and I say that as someone with a problem open right now that an agent is not solving for me. The searching is free labor you'll do anyway. Just get the scope written down in the agreement so you know which tasks you bought.

Coming off job sites, the inspection is the part I'd never hand to an agent to interpret. I read the report myself and I know what a $900 fix looks like versus a $9,000 one. Sextant, if you don't have that, then an agent who has seen a hundred reports is worth something, though a good inspector who will walk it with you is cheaper.

One mechanical point before you choose, because it affects all three options.

Since August 17, 2024, you sign a written representation agreement with a buyer's agent before touring a home, and that agreement states how the agent gets paid. Offers of buyer-agent compensation are no longer published on the MLS. So your agent's fee is an agreement between you and them, and whether the seller ends up funding it is a separate question answered deal by deal. In most markets sellers still do cover it, largely because buyers rarely have spare cash after the down payment and closing costs.

What that means practically: if you sign for 2.5 percent and the seller contributes 2 percent, the gap is yours to pay in cash unless you negotiate something else into the contract. Ask, in writing, what happens in that case before you sign anything.

On the unrepresented route, going without a buyer's agent doesn't automatically reduce the price. The seller's agreement with their own broker may already set their total fee, and the seller keeps the difference rather than passing it to you. Whether an attorney is required at closing, and what disclosures a seller owes you, both vary by state, and that's a question for a licensed professional in your state rather than a forum. Anything you rely on, get it in writing.

I'll ask the embarrassing one. If I go unrepresented, who explains the contract to me? The listing agent works for the seller. Is there anyone in the room on my side by default?

Compass, no. Nobody. That's the whole answer. On thin-margin deals I still use an agent for exactly one reason, which is that someone else is tracking the dates while I'm working three other things.

I've been in analysis for eleven months so take my vote for what it's worth, but I'd go full-service on the first one purely to have someone answering the phone at 8pm on day nine of a ten-day inspection window. That's not a spreadsheet problem.

Depends entirely on what you're buying. Standard resale in a market with real inventory, a reduced-fee arrangement is fine. Anything unusual, land, an estate sale, an off-market seller who wants hand-holding, and you want someone who has closed that shape before. Sextant, you didn't say what you're actually buying.

Add it to your cash-to-close before you decide. When I built my first-deal cost sheet, the buyer-side fee was the single biggest line I'd forgotten to include, and seeing it as a dollar amount changed what I was willing to pay for.

Six months in with nothing closed, so I've mostly learned what I don't know. What I'd want is the middle option with a written scope, because the version of full-service I've been offered was described to me in feelings rather than tasks.

I voted reduced-fee but I keep going back and forth. The argument for paying full on a first purchase is that you learn what the work actually is, and then you know what you're cutting on the second one. Paying less to learn less is a real risk when you have zero reps.