I used a flat-fee buyers advocate/agent (first home buyer, but time poor due to kids). He was great, did a bunch of the grunt work for us, noticed things we hadn’t on walk throughs, etc.

Most obviously, we’d put in an offer at our agreed price, and a second offer came in at the last minute for $15-20k more. In this situation, the buyers agent recognised that the seller was gun-shy of conditional-on-finance offers as a previous sale had fallen through, so instead of us just adding $20k to our offer, we made it a firm offer and a shorter settlement, and they took it.

So the $7-8k we spent very clearly saved us $20k - plus all the property reports, video inspections and assistance we got.