My agent found the house I ended up buying and I still don't know if I would have found it myself

The four-hour window is real, and so is the uncertainty about whether you would have lost the deal without it. Those are two separate questions, and conflating them is what makes the accounting feel slippery.

The cleaner way to frame the fee is not "did she earn 7,900" but "what did early access cost me versus what it was worth." If the property appraised at or above 318k with no concession adjustment needed, the seller-paid 2.5 percent compressed your net acquisition cost rather than inflating the price you paid, which as an appraiser you already know is the version that matters for your basis and your comp position. If comps in that sale cluster showed seller concessions getting added back by appraisers and the adjusted value was closer to 310k, then the fee did pass through to you in a different form.

The question underneath the story you're telling yourself is whether that property would have sat two days, or two hours. In a market where two showings were already scheduled by public launch, the clearing time was short enough that the answer probably matters, but you're the one who knows that zip code's absorption rate well enough to guess it honestly.

What did the property end up appraising at relative to contract price?

The four-hour window is real. What you're trying to price is whether that specific window on that specific property was worth $7,900, and the honest answer is that nobody can reconstruct the counterfactual cleanly enough to know. You already understand this better than most people who ask the question.

What I can say about how the value works in general: a buyer's agent's network is mostly relationships with listing agents, meaning the people who represent sellers. When a listing agent knows your agent, they sometimes make calls before the sign goes up. That is what happened here. It is not guaranteed to happen on every property, and it is not something you can buy separately. You either have an agent in those conversations or you do not.

The part worth sitting with as an appraiser: you already noted that seller-paid concessions move through a transaction and land somewhere. The same logic applies to the commission. The 2.5 percent affected the seller's net, which affected what a buyer at that price point was willing to pay, which affects what the comp looks like when you go to value the next sale in that zip code. You know this. The question of whether you personally captured value equivalent to $7,900 is separate from where the $7,900 went in the transaction mechanics.

The thing you did not quite ask, but probably should: now that written buyer representation agreements are required before touring, the fee conversation happens explicitly upfront. If you buy again in that market, you can ask any agent directly what their network looks like in specific listing offices before you sign anything. That is a real filter now.

What are you thinking about for the next acquisition? That changes which part of this actually matters to answer.