Why Do Some People Avoid Using Real Estate Agents?

Most people use an agent: 88% of buyers purchased through one in 2025 and 91% of sellers listed with one. (NAR 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers) But the minority who do not are not irrational, and their reasons say something true about the industry. I am a broker, so you should read what follows with that in mind. I have tried to give the objections their strongest form, with the data behind them, and then to say honestly where I think they hold and where they do not.

The five objections, in the public’s own numbers

Objection one: trust

Gallup has asked Americans to rate professions’ honesty and ethics for decades. In December 2025, 17% rated real estate agents “very high” or “high,” while 56% said “average” and 26% said “low” or “very low.” (Gallup) That puts agents just below bankers (20%) and lawyers (20%) and building contractors (21%), and well above car salespeople (7%); nurses led at 75%. (Gallup) Gallup notes that ratings for many professions “have declined from pandemic-era highs, leaving overall ethics ratings across many occupations at or near historic lows,” but the industry’s number was never high. (Gallup)

There is a strange gap here. Among people who actually used an agent, 89% of buyers were “very satisfied” with their agent’s honesty and integrity. (NAR 2025 Profile) The public distrusts the profession; clients mostly trust their own agent. Both can be true, because the public opinion is shaped by the industry’s structure (commissions, steering, the 2024 antitrust settlement) and the client opinion by one person’s conduct. An agent who wants your trust has to earn it against the profession’s reputation, not with it. Post #20 in this series is about how.

Objection two: the fee

This is the second most common reason sellers go it alone. Among 2025 FSBO sellers, 28% said their most important reason was that they “did not want to pay a commission or fee,” and another 10% “did not want to deal with an agent.” (NAR 2025 Profile) Among buyers who skipped an agent, 28% also cited not wanting to pay a commission. (Zillow Consumer Housing Trends Report 2026, Buyers) On Mississippi’s average total commission of 5.59%, a $300,000 sale costs about $16,770 across both sides. (Clever Real Estate)

Is it worth it? The research answer is: it depends entirely on the agent. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta economists found “the average full-service listing agent garners a sales price that is 1% to 4.4% lower compared with homeowners who sell only with the assistance of a flat-fee broker,” and that a seller “would have to hire an agent in the top 79th to 90th percentile” to justify the commission on price alone. (UF Warrington on Cunningham, Gerardi and Shen) The same researchers were clear that “there are good agents bringing value to their clients in terms of the ultimate sale price.” (UF Warrington)

So the fee objection is correct about the average agent and wrong about a good one. That is not a comfortable thing for a broker to write, but it matches what I see. The practical implication is not “skip the agent”; it is “do not hire an average one,” and post #16 in this series explains how to tell the difference.

The industry’s own consumer advocates make a related point. When the Department of Justice settled with NAR in 2020, the Consumer Federation of America said the deal would “discourage blatant discrimination against discount brokers and the steering of buyers to high-commission properties” but would “fail to significantly increase real price competition.” (Consumer Federation of America) Fees have been slow to move since, and people notice.

Objection three: “I already have a buyer”

This is the single most common reason. Among 2025 FSBO sellers, 30% said they “sold it to a relative, friend or neighbor” and another 14% said “buyers contacted seller directly”; 40% of FSBO sellers did not actively market the home at all. (NAR 2025 Profile) FSBO sales were just 5% of all sales, an all-time low. (NAR) On the buyer side, among the 15% who did not use an agent, about 40% already knew the seller or bought from someone they knew personally. (Zillow 2026, Buyers) When a neighbor, tenant, or relative is already going to buy the house, most of what a listing agent does is unnecessary: there is no marketing, no showing schedule, no offer competition. This is the objection I agree with most. What that seller still needs is a price grounded in comparable sales, a contract, and someone to manage inspection, title, and closing. Those can be bought as a limited-scope service or from an attorney for far less than a full commission, and an honest agent will say so.

Objection four: “I can do it myself”

In 2025, 43% of buyers started their search online and the first step for only 21% was contacting an agent. (NAR 2025 Generational Trends Report) Every MLS listing is on the portals. The information advantage agents once had is mostly gone, and people reasonably ask what is left.

What is left is judgment and execution. FSBO sellers themselves report the hard parts: in NAR’s survey, the most difficult tasks were “getting the price right” (17%), “preparing or fixing up the home for sale” (12%), “selling within the length of time planned” (10%), and “understanding and performing paperwork” (7%), while 42% reported no difficulty, which fits a group that largely sold to people they knew. (NAR 2025 Profile) FSBO homes sold for a median $360,000 against $425,000 for agent-assisted sales, though that gap partly reflects FSBO sellers owning less expensive homes and selling to people they know, so it is not a clean measure of agent value. (NAR) Zillow’s 2026 buyer survey found that 85% of buyers used an agent, and that buyers who went without were concentrated at the low end: 39% of buyers who paid under $100,000 skipped an agent, and 28% of no-agent buyers bought a manufactured or mobile home. (Zillow Consumer Housing Trends Report 2026, Buyers) Where the seller is known and the property is simple, the agent’s search function genuinely is redundant.

Objection five: incentives

Economists Steven Levitt and Chad Syverson found that agents selling their own homes “stay on the market almost 10 days longer and sell for about 3.7 percent more” than clients’ homes. (NBER Digest) The reason is arithmetic: on a 2.8% fee, an extra $10,000 for you is $280 for the agent, while closing a month sooner is worth the whole fee, sooner. People who understand this sometimes conclude that no agent can be trusted to hold out for the best price. The better conclusion is that the agent’s incentive has to be managed: a fee negotiated in advance, written pricing advice you can check, and the question “would you take this offer on your own house?” asked out loud. Post #24 in this series covers all three.

Where the objections are right, and where they are not

They are right that the profession has a trust problem it has earned, that the average agent does not justify the fee on price, that a seller with a buyer in hand needs far less, and that information is no longer scarce.

They are wrong, or at least incomplete, in three ways. First, the data on averages hides the variance; the gap between a top-quintile agent and an average one is larger than the fee. Second, the transaction’s risks have not gotten simpler. Mississippi’s license law lists the ways deals go wrong, from “making any substantial misrepresentation” to failing to “account for or to remit any monies coming into his or her possession which belong to others,” and the earnest-money, disclosure, and contingency rules exist because people lose money without them. (Mississippi Real Estate License Law, § 73-35-21) Third, the alternative to a bad agent is not no agent; it is a better one or a smaller engagement.

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