Not withstanding the opinion of the agent above.......
I have never signed with any agent as a buyer and have never been asked to. We have also bought 2 out of 3 houses from the seller directly with no agent involved on either side.
Where we bought the traditional way, with an agent, we were locating so I could attend college for my graduate degree, paid by my employer. We flew into town on Sunday to start our house hunting trip. We had pre-contacted an agent so they knew what we wanted and how much we wanted to spend. We saw "every" appropriate house in the market. We are efficient buyers, having gone through a selling bubble, where 10 minutes could lose you a house. So lots of houses, we eliminated from the MLS listing right in her office or with a drive by.
So sitting there with no real hits, I contacted another agent, somewhat at random out of the phone book (this was late 80's, so phone books existed). We arranged to go out bright and early Monday morning. This new agent showed us many houses that the first agent did not show us. All used the same parameters that we told the first agent. Of course, houses we already saw were eliminated in his office, looking through the MLS listings. We saw all the houses, kept some in mind, but committed to nothing. Monday afternoon, contacted a 3rd agent to go out Tuesday.
Tuesday morning, went through the same routine, eliminating houses on MLS that we already saw. Agent insisted we look at a condo. We specifically said we want a house, not a condo.....I did note on the MLS listing, it had in bold....10% selling agent commission. Anyways, we went out and looked at several houses, one of which was exactly what we wanted. We put in an offer which was accepted that night and we spent the rest of the house hunting trip at Busch Gardens.
I have no idea why the first 2 agents didn't show us "all" the houses that met our criteria. But they didn't. And I'm sure most people don't go in all commando, with the requirement to get an offer accepted before leaving at the end of a week long house hunting trip.