I have lived in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and now New Mexico and all the real estate agents charge 6% for developed property and 10% for undeveloped land.  I have talked to other surveyors in most of the western states and they tell me that their realitors are charging the same fee schedule.  Although this is not what we normally think of as price fixing it sure seems odd to me that the same percentage of the sale price is the fee collected by some many real estate agents.
The reason for the fee I charge is that New Mexico is mostly undeveloped property.  Some one will come to you with a deed that is 100% bounds and the adjoing deeds don't match as far as the adjoiner call.  The area contained within the deed does not match the use and occupation lines and then you find out the deed was written by a notary in 1940 and the infromation was just repeated for deed to deed.  Or the deed(s) were in spanish and incorrectly translated to english.  Tons of other problems that are not addressed since the title companies usually write an exception to coverage that allow them to skip doing a through title search.  I wass given a survey to do and one page of document references by a title company.  I made a quick search of the court house and ended up with a three page list of relavant documents.  Things like a town site that underlayed my clients property, with twenty two deed for lots.  Along with a lot of other distrubing things.  Took me three months to unravel all the problems for my client.  If you can imagine your worst colonial title search and resulting title and occupation problems, then you have a clear picture of about 70% of the land in New Mexico.  
I love the work, kind of like doing a CSI for real property, but I need to get paid a reasonable fee for the work and two to three hunred bucks does not cover my transportation costs or my E&O insurance cost.
Seems some of us are getting the very short end of the stick, especially if you are representive of abstractors in your area.
I would be dead in the water without may of the older abstracts I use in my work.  They are worth their weight in gold for me.