your_pal_chris:BE TOUGHER ABOUT CREDITS AND FIXES!!!
My point is we should have legitimately gotten a few thousand in fixes and/or credits that we didn't get because we were starry-eyed first-timers. Which gets back to the math of "Does an agent make sense or not?" Would the fixes cost less than the commission paid to someone to negotiate them for you? Not sure. For us and the price house we were in, we probably still came out a little bit ahead. Next time, though ...
You didn't need a real estate agent, you only needed a good inspector.
We also have been battling lots of repairs on a house we purchased in March - but, we had an agent and an inspector. The inspector didn't do a good job. The agent had nothing to do with it.