The one person who was completely, 100% useless to the process was the buying realtor. It seriously makes me angry that this man is literally going to make over $5,000 for about 3-4 hours of work meeting me at a handful of properties and drafting a cookie-cutter purchase and sales agreement.
When it comes to finding a home, everything in the MLS database is listed on the web. You might be able to get a 24 hour lead on a property coming through that same office (this is supposedly ethically questionable at least in this state). The purchase and sale agreement can be generated by a real-estate attorney for a fraction of the cost.
Showing houses amounted to the realtor handing me the same MLS printout I saw on zillow/realtor.com/trulia and standing in the corner. When it came to negotiating the price, any questions I had about the market or quality of the property were met with a combination of blank stares or 'what is the house worth to you.' This is mainly because any time you come down in price, the guy who is supposedly working for you takes a pay cut. Do you think he wants you to come in at 88% of the asking price instead of 93% when you are considering an offer? No, he doesn't want that.
The only hitch is that virtually no seller's agent will talk to someone who is not represented by a buying agent. So you're stuck paying 2.5% of your home value to someone because otherwise the seller's agent just won't give you the time of day.
As a first-time home buyer, I thought at the very least the realtor had a lot more involvement with arranging the attorney, inspections, etc, and that he would earn his keep in this process... so that I can go to work and show up at closing with everything ready to go. Haha, that was silly of me. That's apparently all on the buyer. There were several key steps that would have caused the closing date or inspection deadlines to be missed if I hadn't applied the thinking/planning beat into me by the Navy and proactively made phone calls/arranged meetings/asked a lot of questions about what to do next. The day I went into contract, I spent two hours on the phone arranging all of this stuff. Then again, most everyone I talk to in my family is surprised that I was able to get closed in 45 days, and I suppose the lack of initiative involved by everyone in the process (bank, attorney, appraisal, etc) and lack of someone to guide you through it is a big reason why it can take much longer.