The unrepresented buyer
As is usual this time of year in Charleston real estate or likely most other parts of the country, listings of many homes for sale were withdrawn between Thanksgiving and Xmas. The most obvious reason are sellers who didn't urgently have to sell not wanting to be bothered with showings disrupting the holiday season. Many of those listings have steadily been coming back on the market in the first few weeks of January. Another flurry of listings were withdrawn in the final days of 2006 only to be relisted in the first few days of 2007 with the obvious advantage of appearing to be fresh listings because of the all important 27, the first 2 digits of the MLS code indicating what year the property was listed.
I have a variety of saved searches set up for clients with auto notifications sent to their email as soon as properties that meet their criteria come on the market. I get a copy and review them as well and every so often, a new listing comes out that I know that I have seen before. If I am showing homes to a client and we narrow down, I'll always pull up the history of the listing to see the real time on the market, where the property was initially priced and gather other bits of data to help assist my buyer write an offer that will be most advantageous to them and with the highest chances of being accepted or where it likely might be counter offered.
I really started to wonder about this idea when a listing came on the market that I was pretty certain I saw before but because it looked so good for one of my clients, I automatically clicked the history link and not only had the home been on the market for about 6 months but it came back on the market with a $25,000 price increase. A price increase as in, nobody has wanted to buy this home in the last 6 months at the old price but it is so good, it is actually worth more today than yesterday. Now most of us know that there hasn't been a lot of appreciation in the last 6 months, at best, prices are stable. Based on average selling price, the Charleston real estate market appreciated by 6% last year and most of that increase likely occurred in the first 6 months of the year, not the last.
So I was wondering why the listing agents go through all the effort to make their listings appear to be a hot off the press, fresh, brand new listing when the history of the listing is so readily available and then a light bulb went on in my brain, ahhaahh. 
They seem to be doing all this because they are hoping to get a call or an email directly from a buyer and earn a commission on both sides of the deal (dual agency). They can still tell the buyer the truth, just not all the truth. A typical conversation with a potential buyer might go something like this.
buyer - "how long has this home been on the market?"
agent - "it was listed on January 4 of this year."
buyer - "what is the asking price?"
agent - "it is being offered for $399,000."
The agent is telling the truth but the buyer didn't get all of the story. They didn't hear that the house first came on the market last June, was initially priced at $450,000, was steadily reduced during the fall to $374,000 and was withdrawn in late December, then relisted in January of this year at the current price of $399,000. Maybe the buyer thinks it's a nice house and makes an offer about 5% below listing price (in today's buyer's market, that seems to be the standard) and rounds up to $380,000, the seller counters back at $387,000 and the contract is ratified. Had the buyer used a buyer's agent, they might have begun the negotiation at $370,000 or even less and likely ratified at much less than $387,000. The buyer wins and the buyer's agent provided a meaningful service and earned his/her commission.
Today's empowered buyer has a lot of access to information but it isn't likely that they can find the incredible amount of information that a real estate agent will have access to, faster and quicker. I think that many people are afraid to commit to a relationship with a real estate agent because they somehow think that they will be forced to buy a home, that the agent will somehow convince them to make the biggest financial decision of their lives against their will as if they are tying them down and forcing them to sign on the bottom line.
If only I was that good a salesperson 
- my sales philosophy has always been to help my client with their purchase, not to be a "pushy" salesperson.
Potential buyers also do a lot of shopping for their next home on their own. Whether they go online and search the MLS or read the newspaper classifieds or real estate magazines or drive around neighborhoods, they are searching. If they contact an agent in any of the above ways, they are contacting the listing agent. The listing agent does not represent the buyer, rather the seller. It is not likely that a buyer will be able to purchase a home at a lower price by dealing with an agent who doesn't represent them. If the buyer thinks that they might save money by cutting out the middleman of the buyer agent, it generally won't, the listing agent will likely just keep all of the commission rather than having to split it with a buyer agent and as in the above example, they might even pay more because they didn't have access to all the available information on which to base an offer.
Better than searching for a home, the buyer would be better served by searching for a great buyer's agent. Visit agent websites, get to know them by reading their blog, make telephone calls and send emails and see who is available and responsive. Meet several and interview them, it is a hiring interview. Make sure you feel comfortable with them and that they understand what you are looking for in a home. The good agents will be interviewing you as well to make sure that you are serious, financially qualified and realistic in what you want and what you can affford. Spend the time to search for an excellent agent to represent you and then search for a home, don't find a home and just deal with any agent.
It's all about the Rules of Agency, and in order to be represented, you have to understand who is representing who in a real estate transaction. While real estate law varies from state to state, most rules of agency are usually similar from one state to another. Christine Forgione of NY Houses 4 Sale has an interesting article titled Buyer Beware. Please read the complete story.