Who pays closing costs, the buyer or the seller?  

I have a contract, that a friend that is a real estate attorney has looked over.  He said it was a good contract except for the buyer requesting I pay closing costs.  I have no interest in paying said closing costs because as far as I know, buyers pay those extra costs (real estate agent, closing, etc.).

This is the new "thing" for agents to ask for. We got told a 100 times that we would have to pay closing costs when we sold our house. I refused and we had no problems selling. It's just a way for new home buyers to be even less invested in a property.

That's a negotiable item.

Depends on the market. It is negotiable, very negotiable.

Depends how hard or soft the market is and if you are the buyer or seller. How motivated are you?

This is the most accurate answer. It all depends on what your final purchase/sales contract ends up saying.

My experience here (my main business is residential RE transactions) is that there is a local

practice relating to payment of various closing costs.  It's a bit of a mental hurdle when you talk

about "me" paying "his" closing costs, but at the end of the day it is just money.  Decide what

your bottom line is (net) and negotiate with that in mind.  If they want you to pay their costs then

the sales price needs to be higher.

It's negotiable but seller usually pays all commissions.

There are some closing costs typically paid by the seller and some typically paid by the buyer.  The Buyer is wanting you to pay their typical closing costs.

It can allow a buyer to buy more house / use more savings for down payment and in reality, finance closing costs. If seller pays all closing costs, buyer just has to pay down payment. This can be negotiated into the contract where buyer offers a little more for house and closing costs come out of seller's pot.

How do you feel about earnest money?  Whats the minimum you'd be happy with?

As stated above, negotiable. When I bought my house last year it was a short sale and both the owner and the bank were motivated to dump the property. Benefit for me, as I paid nothing in the end and got it for the offer I put in.

Earnest money, I'd say 1% of offer price. Unless the property is really something special or in high demand, earnest money is just going through the motions. It'll go back to the buyer in most cases, particularly during due diligence period.

The buyer has paid for a home inspector.  I am selling it at a cheap price given the local market and neighborhood to get out fast.

Its just us and the buyer (well there's his bank).  The house is owned outright.  I just don't want to get fucked over.

It depends....on what you negotiate.

Not to be a pain in the ass, but everything is negotiable.  The buyer probably put that into the offer in order to get you to focus on negotiating the closing costs vs. trying to up the price.  Raise the price and pay the closing costs or lower the price and have him pay the closing costs.  

In every instance that I've bought a house (4x) the seller paid the real estate fees if that helps.

The last time I moved I did it on a really short timeline, my wife was 8 months pregnant when we found out we needed to be on the other side of the country two months later for work or there wouldn't be any work.

I was in the construction business for 15 years, which of course meant my primary residence was about halfway through a remodel and had been for years. After spending two weeks getting it buttoned up enough to put on the market I left for a 3 day househunting trip here in SC, terrified the whole time my wife was going to pop while I was gone. While I was getting on the plane to return home, having bought a house here that morning, I got a call from my wife we had an offer on our house...for $25K more than we were asking!!!

They wanted us to cover all the costs, and finish the remodel, and change a bunch of stuff, and replace the furnace, and so on, but all things considered it was a very good offer that netted us more than we were expecting and it all worked out.

Point being a lot of buyers want to roll all their costs into the mortgage rather than have to spend money up front, even buyers who would have no problem affording to do otherwise, because they'd rather carry mortgage debt than give up their liquidity or other assets or carry other debt. Just make sure your net is where you want it and adjust the deal from there, it doesn't matter who pays what, it only matters what your check is when the deal closes, and that the agreement is written in such a way that you're not going to lose if it doesn't.