How to Buy a House Without a Realtor

Can you buy a house without a realtor?

Yes — and it's more common than you'd think. No law in any state requires a buyer to be represented by an agent. What an agent normally does is a bundle of jobs: find listings, book showings, run comparable sales, write and negotiate the offer, coordinate inspections and the appraisal, and shepherd you to closing. When you go unrepresented, that bundle doesn't disappear — it splits between you and a handful of specialists you hire directly.

The honest trade-off: you save the possibility of the buyer-side commission and you gain control, but you take on the time, the coordination, and — most importantly — the job of protecting your own interests against a seller whose agent is paid to get the highest price. The rest of this guide is about doing that well.

What changed after the 2024 NAR settlement

If you're researching this in 2026, the single biggest development is the National Association of Realtors' $418 million antitrust settlement. Two practice changes took effect August 17, 2024:

• Buyer-agent compensation was removed from the MLS. Sellers can no longer advertise a buyer-agent commission on the multiple listing service. They may still offer one — through a concession or off-MLS negotiation — but it's no longer baked into the listing by default.
• Agents must sign a written buyer agreement before touring. Any agent using an MLS has to put their fee in writing, clearly and negotiably, before showing you a home. Commissions "are not set by law and are fully negotiable" is now something the paperwork has to say out loud.

The phases of the transaction, start to close

A purchase runs on a predictable timeline. Here are the five phases, and what falls to you in each when there's no buyer's agent.

The paperwork you'll need — and who prepares it

"Who does the paperwork?" is the question that stops most people. Here is the full set, and who is responsible for each piece when you have no buyer's agent.

Notice how little of this actually falls on you: the offer, and reading everything carefully. The seller supplies the disclosures; your lender and the title company (or attorney) produce the rest. Your real job is to not miss a deadline and to understand what you're signing.

Who supports you when you don't have an agent

You're not on your own — you just assemble your own team, à la carte. Typical 2026 costs:

Free help exists too: a HUD-approved housing counselor can walk a first-time or lower-income buyer through the process at low or no cost, and the CFPB's buying-a-house tools explain every closing form in plain language.

Attorney state or title state? It changes who does what

Where you buy determines your default support. In roughly 20 "attorney states" — including Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Connecticut, Delaware, and West Virginia — a licensed attorney must handle key parts of a residential closing. There, hiring the attorney isn't optional, and it conveniently gives an unrepresented buyer exactly the legal backup they need.

In the remaining "title states" (much of the West and South), a title or escrow company handles closing and no attorney is required. It works — but remember the title company is neutral; it processes the deal, it doesn't advise you. In a title state, buying an hour of an attorney's time to review the contract is cheap insurance. Rules vary by county, so confirm the requirement locally before you write your offer.

How much can you actually save?

This is the reason most people are here, so let's be precise. The buyer-agent commission averages about 2.5–2.8% of the price. On paper, skipping it looks like this:

Your cost = attorney ($500–$1,500) + inspection ($300–$600); the inspection is a cost you'd pay with an agent too.

So the realistic outcome on a $400,000 home is somewhere between $0 (seller won't budge, agent keeps it) and about $9,000–$10,000 (seller passes the full buyer-side fee to you, minus your attorney and inspection). Model your own price and rate with our closing-costs calculator and affordability calculator.

The risks of buying unrepresented

An honest guide names the downside. Going without a buyer's agent exposes you to real, sometimes expensive, failure modes:

• Overpaying. Without your own comparable-sales analysis, you have no independent read on value — and you're negotiating against an agent paid to maximize the price.
• Contract and deadline mistakes. A missed contingency date or a poorly written clause can cost you your earnest money or leave you bound to a bad deal. This is the risk an attorney all but eliminates.
• No advocate at the table. The listing agent legally represents the seller. Anything you tell them can be used to negotiate against you. There is nobody whose job is your interest unless you hire one.
• Disclosure and defect gaps. Knowing which inspections to order and how to read disclosures is experience you may not have; a missed issue becomes your problem after closing.
• The savings mirage. The worst outcome: you take on all of the above and, because you didn't negotiate the commission down, save nothing at all.

Two special cases: new construction and FSBO

Selling your own place instead? Our FSBO seller's guide is the mirror image of this one.

When it makes sense — and when to hire representation

Going unrepresented rewards a specific profile. It tends to make sense when:

• You already have a specific home in mind and don't need help searching.
• The seller will pass the buyer-side commission to you in writing — the savings are guaranteed, not hoped for.
• You're buying a FSBO home, where there's no buyer-side fee to lose.
• You're experienced, or you're hiring an attorney to cover the legal work.

Hire an agent (or at least a flat-fee attorney) when it's your first purchase, the market is competitive, the property or contract is complicated, or the seller won't reduce the price for your lack of representation. If you're not saving money and you're taking on all the risk, being unrepresented is the worst of both worlds.