This was my experience as well. I've bought two homes and both times we found it ourselves. Used the real estate agent friend of a family member (there's always one) to show us a couple houses and relay offers, but I never felt like they did something I couldn't have done myself. I went along to both home inspections and found things the inspector missed. At all 3 closings (buying and years later selling the first house, buying second house) I've been sitting there in a room full of people sighing and tapping their feet while I read all the paperwork they want me to sign and all three times I've caught mistakes, two of which were several thousand dollars in the other party's favor. All in all it's not just the realtors that are doing mediocre work to extract a percentage, but a whole industry (agents, inspectors, title companies).

I couldn't agree more that selling my house by myself was also a breeze. Maybe the experience is different in a down economy. I paid a flat $175 fee to a website for an MLS listing (which farmed the listing out to an agent in our MLS region 5 hours away) plus the 3% buyers agent fee and people started calling. I'm not a great photographer but I took pictures that were 100X better than a realtor walking around with a cell phone and put the Zillow "zestimate" as the listing price because I did a lot of research and took an honest look at my house and couldn't come up with a reason to go higher or lower. I definitely got the "will you pay my fee" calls despite already putting the buyer's agent fee on the MLS listing. As an experiment I tried to negotiate that with an agent and I realized that wasn't going to go anywhere. The only annoying part of the process was the buyer's agent clumsily slipping in some clauses in the contract that would have made it a terrible deal for me.

If anyone is reading this and wants to try going without an agent I'd recommend asking a friend who recently closed on a house to see their contract. That will help you spot any tricks an agent is trying to slip past you.