I haven't heard any agent refer to a standard commission, in real life or on this forum; the references to standard or normal have come from other, non-Realtor, posters. There *is* such a thing as an office standard or policy for commissions; if your agent's broker says she may not list a property for less than, say, 10%, she cannot contract to work for a lower fee. & I cannot imagine a situation in which any group of Realtors got together & agreed on anything more complicated than where to have lunch, much less to "boycott" *anything* or to violate a law; there's just too much potential for disaster. If you're offering a low commission (you yourself must determine what's "low") to a buyer's agent & your property isn't being shown, the low commissin might indeed be a factor, one which the buyers & their agent will have discussed & agreed on, but it's a decision made by the buyer & the buye's agent, not by some sort of cartel. .

Wow, thanks again to everyone for all of the great advice. I believe our listing expires in December. I will have to double check. I have met some agents at open houses and have received a few recommendations from friends, so if/when the time comes to re-list I will find a more attentive realtor. We actually had a showing yesterday for the first time in over a month. I had about 45 minutes notice and have never cleaned so fast in my life! It's usually really clean but I was spending too much of my weekend organizing closets and cupboards again and delaying my deep cleaning. It looked good by the time we left but definitely not up to my usual "immaculate" standard. Our realtor did tell us about a month ago that a couple is very interested in our house but they are trying to get enough money together for their down payment. Not very promising, but it's nice to be wanted I guess. My husband and I compromised and are lowering the price $5500 for now. At least that brings us closer to 150k than 170k so that might help a bit. I honestly think our house is so much nicer, newer, and definitely bigger than the other homes in our price range, but I realize that location is everything and our location isn't ideal. So many homes in our range are so outdated and need a lot of work, whereas ours is move-in ready, so I'm just hoping someone will fall in love with it eventually and see the advantages of not having to fix anything once they move in. Well, if the house doesn't sell by the time our listing expires I will definitely review this thread and keep all of this great information in mind before signing a new contract.

Really glad you passed this along, GD. You're absolutely right that corporations just want to maximize the bottom line, which means they'd rather pay peanuts. I just have to inject that my son with a college degree earned $20,000 last year working full time for Barnes and Noble-it was his third year with them. Moving up the responsibility ladder wouldn't have made much difference. It's amazing to me that the guy in charge of handling all the receipts, tens of thousands of dollars a day, is paid $10.50-$11.50 an hour. The good news is that he got a real job utilizing his skills other than charm and good looks, and the ability to keep the cash drawers straight. Or, at the end, his ability to energize people to buy Nooks, which are well worth the money BTW. At least they offered health insurance. Back to HD and Lowe's: I liked it that at HD the sales guy we worked with wasn't dependent on us putting in our order one second sooner than we were ready in order to enhance his income for the month. I liked it that his income didn't depend on him urging us to buy a more expensive line, although ours was at the higher end, or to purchase add-ons we didn't necessarily need or want. When we ordered 4 tall cabinets with glass fronts, he volunteered that it would be significantly less expensive to order them "glass ready" and get the glass locally. I didn't feel bad about coming back multiple times and using up his time. Time spent with us nailing down down every last detail didn't mean he was failing to make a potential sale elsewhere. He also called the company to ask a couple of things and got us at least one more expensive freebie than we would have gotten otherwise. Would he have done that if it cut his commission? Maybe. You're right about hiring the kid who doesn't know or care diddly about kitchens vs. people with depth of experience or at least enthusiasm. In a different HD than the one we bought from, we thought of a question we wanted an answer to, so asked the kid on duty. He hadn't a clue what we were talking about and clearly had no idea about the line we were looking at. Why, one wonders, was he working in the kitchen department? Would I seriously work with him to design my kitchen? Not a chance; I might have walked across the street to Lowe's if that were the choice. We tell everyone that Steve at the Melrose Dr. HD is great to work with. I'm pretty sure a couple of people have bought cabinets from Steve on our recommendation. HD needs to think about this and pay the Steves in their employ a comfortable wage.

"I found out that my realtor will get about half of his commission. There is a program with the bank in which they take a percentage of my realtor’s Commission and use it to reduce my closing costs. They are taking $300 from his commission and applying to my costs. Should I take it or let him keep it?" Again, I'm not sure why any of this is your problem or why you have been made privy to the information, other than because you asked and he told you. This "bank program" also sounds completely made up to me - perhaps the realtors on this thread can weigh in, but I have never heard of such a thing. When we bought our house recently, my bank and my realtor had absolutely nothing to do with each other. How are you verifying all of this, other than taking his word?