get an agent on your side. I'm a mortgage broker and yes I get paid for what I do but I could only imagine what would happen to someone trying to get a mortgage on his own... You aren't paying them, the seller is. I understand that you'd like to cut costs of course. Maybe you can get them to lower the price by not using an agent but I don't think offering an agent .5% would work too well. If I was an agent I wouldn't do that. It is the same when people start asking me to cut my loan origination fee. Sure at times I'll do it and I'll still take care of them but if problems arise on a loan where I'm making twice the commission my attention is going to go into solving the problem on that loan first. So if you do get someone to take .5% I doubt you're going to get full service when they have other deals that might take priority because they are making 2 or 3% in commission.