Even an incompetent agent serves a very valuable purpose in a real estate purchase.
Without the agents, you'd have two people attempting to negotiate a 6 (or 7, nowadays!) figure purchase directly. Before it was over, you'd hate the other party too much to ever complete a sale.
Agents sit between the two parties and have a vested interest in seeing a transaction take place. They talk to each other and soften the communication so that you can tell someone you want to pay them fifty-fucking-grand less money for the single largest asset in their life that they were counting on to fund their retirement, and have that met with a counter-offer instead of an angry storming off.
Without the agents, you'd have two people attempting to negotiate a 6 (or 7, nowadays!) figure purchase directly. Before it was over, you'd hate the other party too much to ever complete a sale.
Agents sit between the two parties and have a vested interest in seeing a transaction take place. They talk to each other and soften the communication so that you can tell someone you want to pay them fifty-fucking-grand less money for the single largest asset in their life that they were counting on to fund their retirement, and have that met with a counter-offer instead of an angry storming off.