<prompt> Human: Im looking to buy my very first house with my girlfriend and I really dont want to have to pay a realtor thousands of dollars just to find me a house. I can easily look on the Internet for houses by myself. From what I have heard, I can just get a real estate attorney to guide me through the process of getting the contracts signed and all the legal matters taken care of. My dilemma is that I dont know what the house buying process entails. I dont want to get screwed over from being inexperienced. Im buying in Maryland if it makes any difference.Help please!EDIT: Wow this received a lot of attention.Thank you guys for the suggestions. I would say that at this point Im probably going to end up using a realtorreal estate agent which TIL are two different things. With this being my first home and my lack of experience I think I may let a pro guide me through the process. Maybe my next house Ill try to go without one.My intent in doing this was to knock the price down some based off of what my agent would have gotten but it seems that this might be easier said than done.I would like to say however, that those of you that are saying the seller pays for your agents commission are wrong from my understanding. While Im no expert on this topic clearly, it is common sense that if the commission is paid by the seller, it is already priced in to the amount Im seeing advertised. I just wanted to cut out another person getting a chunk of that money. But I can see how a realtor selling a house may not want to sell to me knowing that I dont want them to keep all of that negotiated for commission.But thanks again for all the advice. It forced me into researching more about the process and I have learned a ton.EDIT2: Just an FYI to anyone who is interested in saving money on realtor costs as much as I am, a bunch of people have mentioned redfin.com as a potential resource for saving money when buyingselling. I have been looking at the website and it seems like a great starting point.  <response>: Im going to take a different take on this than everyone else here and say that realtors arent that useful in this day and age unless you happen to know a good one thats really looking out for you and has good bargaining skills, dont get one just for the sake of getting one - theyre usually out for the commission and might not care too much about the price you get as long as you make the purchaseRead this article: In my experience, negotiating through brokers is the most inefficient and frustrating experience imaginable. By far, our best real estate experience was when we bought a house directly from the sellers. 