The hard truth about fees
Someone said to me recently: “I can buy a property without paying a buyer’s agent fee.”
And that's technically right.
You absolutely can buy property without paying a buyer’s agent. People do it every day.
But that sentence highlights something interesting about how we think about fees in real estate.
Most people focus on the fee they can see. Very few stop to ask where the other fees are hiding.
Because the hard truth about real estate is this:
Fees don’t disappear. They just move.
The Fees You See
Some fees are obvious.
You see them clearly on an invoice:
- Buyer’s agent fees
- Legal fees
- Strata report
- Building and pest inspections
- Loan establishment fees
Because they are visible, they often become the ones people try hardest to avoid.
But in doing so, many people overlook the other costs that can quietly creep into the transaction.
The Fees You Don’t See
In property, some of the most expensive costs are the invisible ones.
Paying $50,000 more than necessary because you misread the market.
Buying in the wrong pocket of a suburb because the growth drivers weren’t understood.
Underestimating renovation costs. Missing a better opportunity that never came to your attention.
These costs don’t come with invoices.
But they can easily be far more expensive than the fees people were trying to avoid.
The “Free” Advice Question
There’s another version of this that’s worth thinking about.
Sometimes services in real estate appear free. “You don’t pay anything" they will say.
But whenever something is free, it’s worth using your critical thinking and asking a simple question:
Because in many cases, the person giving the advice is being paid somewhere else in the transaction.
For example, developer stock resellers or property marketers often work, not the buyer. It’s not uncommon for them to receive commissions of 7-8% of the purchase price. That cost usually isn’t presented as a separate fee. Instead, it is typically built directly in the price of property. And guess who pays for it? The buyer ultimately pays for it — just indirectly. Not black and white on an invoice they'll see, just a marketing fee expense from the developer to the sales representative who closed the deal.
In other words, what appears “free” at the surface is often simply hidden inside the price of an asset.
That doesn’t necessarily make it bad. But it does mean the incentives might not be aligned with yours.
And incentives quietly shape outcomes.
Alignment Matters
When you pay for advice, something very simple happens.
The incentives become clear. The person advising you works for you.
Their role is to protect your interests, not to ensure a transaction happens or to satisfy another party in the process.
And when the stakes involve hundreds of thousands — sometimes millions — of dollars, that alignment matters more than most people realise.
The Real Question
At the end of the day, buying property isn’t about avoiding every fee.
It’s about avoiding the expensive mistakes.
Some people prefer to navigate the process themselves. And that’s perfectly fine.
Others prefer to have someone working solely in their corner.
Neither choice is inherently right or wrong.
But the hard truth about real estate fees is this: FEES NEVER DISAPPEAR.
They simply show up somewhere else in the transaction.
The real question is not whether you pay. It’s where the cost ends up being.re