When I bought a home a few months ago, my real estate agent handed me a check worth tens of thousands of dollars — a rebate on his commission. Windfalls like that could become more common if home buyers demand better deals.

Typically an agent earns a commission of perhaps 2.5 to 3 percent of the value of the home you buy, and the agent for the seller pockets a similar sum. So if you buy a million-dollar home, your agent earns around $30,000 for what might be only a few dozen hours of work.

When the stakes are this high, it’s worth shopping around.

I called local Michigan real estate agents, asking whether they would work on a fee-for-service basis. Jon Boyd of the Home Buyer’s Agent of Ann Arbor agreed.

He charged $120 per hour, which added up to nearly $7,000. But he passed along the additional commission he otherwise would have received. (To preserve his privacy and mine, I won’t say exactly how much, but it was a lot more.)