We are in TX and are about to make the jump and buy our first house
in the next 6 months or so. At the moment, we are planning to do it
without a buyer's agent - we've been studying our target neighborhood
for a while and have a pretty good idea of what different types of
houses sell for, don't need help with finding a mortgage broker (we've
been saving for several years, so we'll just buy the house for cash),
have a good inspector lined up (a family friend), etc. We are
fortunate to live in an area where the MLS is online, so we don't need
an agent to look at the listings.

My understanding is that if we buy a house without a buyer's agent,
the listing agent gets to collect the entire 6% commission (with our
target price, 6% amounts to $30-35K, not exactly pocket change).
We are thinking of trying to negotiate for either a rebate, or
reduction in price based on the fact that the listing agent won't have
to split the commission with the buyer's agent. It seems that the
listing agent would have every incentive to go for this - after all,
we could always turn around, get an agent, and the listing agent
would end up with only 3%. Yet we are not sure how to negotiate
the split, when to bring this up during the offer process, etc.

Our primary objective is to buy a nice house, not to antagonize
potential sellers and their agents But it seems that gifting an
extra 18K to the listing agent (or the buyer's agent, whose services
we don't really need) is an overkill. Any advice will be appreciated!