I think that charging a fee is a very smart way to go. As stated in the article, the associate puts out a lot of work whether the house sells or not. If another associate brings a Buyer to your seller and the deal falls apart, you dont get paid. If something happens like, it is not selling fast enough or they want to back out or anything like that, you dont get paid. The commission structure is find when you are a sales rep. for some company and you have limited risk. But in todays market where the cost to sell a home, on the Realtors side of things, is getting very expensive ( advertising in the paper, in mag, in your companies own advertisment, marketing to other agents which means your time, any mailings you do, radio ads, etc ), if that house does not sell you, the agent, can be in a very serious financial situation. Based on all the fees we are charged for marketing, office fees, all of our expenses, it is not in our best interest to hang ourselves out on a line to sell our help buy a home. A fee for doing X for the Seller compared to charging X commission and getting paid weeks or even months later, when we have to still pay our own bills, fees, etc, is not unfair to any client/customer. Yes we are Sales people and we have Legal considerations but as independent contractors we have to protect ourselves against legal matters from the client, financial consideration of "Doing Business", and also making a Profit.

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