I believe in math and numbers and from what I see, all expenses and fees associated with the purchase and sale of a home comes down to the the consumer paying…aka The Buyer

Simple…  If you the Buyer has to put 5% of your own money down, then your lender gives you the remaining 95% of the agreed purchase price, doesn’t that add up to you and your lender paying 100% of the sale which includes remuneration

The commission is only ever disbursed on the Seller’s side. Essentially the money collected by the Seller’s solicitor from the Buyer is used to pay the two brokerages. One could say it’s merely being deflected from the Buyer before it ever gets to the Seller. I’ve always looked at the definition of “to pay” as one must have controlling interested in that certain amount of money before they can actually PAY for something.  In this case their lawyer actually intercepts the money before it’s in the possession of the Seller.