Nice article from the SE blog on dual agency

Keith, I am surprised that there are so many buyers who are aware of the buyer's rebate from you but still do not use a broker.

Rebate or not; you are at an advantage with your own representation. Do the research and you will find someone that matches your expectations.

I think a good broker is fantastic but many brokers might be worse than no broker. Ultimately, too many just want to get the deal done and don't really care about getting the best possible deal for you and, more immediately, a lot of them just aren't that good. For every "good" one, I've met 10 awful ones.

UES_Ida,
I think part of the problem is the explosion in the number of agents/brokers in the past 30 years. When I first got my license there were about 1500 brokers/agents selling Coops/Condos in Downtown Manhattan. Now there are probably about 30,000 working that same territory. And while the number of deals done annually has increased it has not kept pace with that. Think of it this way: with 30,000 agents working deals in Manhattan and 14,000 deals done, that is less than 1/2 deal per agent on average per year.

Keep the number of the 'good' one :)