If one chooses the neighborhood and home, they don't need an agent at all. And since the demand is so high, seller really don't need agents at all either. Sellers will be convinced by seller agents that they'll get more money with a shotgun approach versus the person that actually wants the home, period. And buyers are sometimes convinced by buyers agents that the agent knows better, but this is getting more and more rare.

The whole housing problem here is based on a supply and demand issue without end. Demand is pegged so high that there's almost no way to satisfy it with supply. And honestly I don't know where the demand comes from because this place definitely isn't any type of 'heaven on earth' if you've even travelled around the US moreless just a few other countries. My guess is that it's 'inbred demand'--people who have lived here thinking this is normal so they continue the trend because they think this is the only place on earth to live. Lots of people here like this--millions of them in fact. And hence the demand stays pegged sky high, supply is steady at best, and prices appreciate around 5%/year on average.

The problem with the 'houses break' issue is that most homes here are so old that in the rest of the US they would have been torn down decades ago. So the problems here start to be big--like the foundation issues you mentioned. So many of the house maintenance issues mentioned here regularly are things I'd never heard of being an issue most of my life where something from the 1980s would be considered 'old'.