How to dump an agent

Better off terminating now than going through a purchase with her and discovering she's totally useless. Then you get to the closing table and you look at that statement - and you see the fat commission she is raking in from the sale - it will make you even madder.

Trust me from experience, you want to nip this in the bud now. If she's unhelpful at THIS stage in the game she will only complicate things when it's time to get down to business. I learned this the hard way and I'm still steaming when I think about what she earned for doing absolutely nothing - in fact she made matters MORE difficult.

UM...just stop talking to them, you're under know obligation, so what do you care?

And who uses realtors to find houses? Doesn't EVERYONE have the internet now? WAY too much HGTV watching going on over here. Gone are the days when a realtor brings you to a house that "they've found for you"...we all have MLS access.

Get a buyer's agent to give you a commission rebate. We got 50% back from our's. It's our money, and we found the house, so we deserved it. Only reason we even used a buyer's agent was so we could get money back.

By not returning your contract signed you have already told the agent you have no loyalty to this person. Likewise, the agent has no duty to work for you without the benefit of receiving at least a split commission. Your service thus far is equal to the amount you've promised to reciprocate: zilch.

The fact the realtor stuck an exclusive buyer agency contract in front of this buyer the first day is a red flag in and of itself. While exclusivity on the seller side is common, it is not required or standard practice for buyer agents.

Better yet, skip the buyer agent route all together and save the 2.5% on the purchase price. Find your own listings using the globe or MLS, check out open houses on your own and then use a good lawyer and home inspector, or even a fee-based real estate advisor for the negotiation and paperwork instead of paying the fat commission. The fee to commission-based buyer agents increases as the buyer pays more for the property - their incentives are opposite the buyer! We saved >$15k doing the house hunting work ourselves and using a flat fee based advisor (real estate cafe in cambridge).

My rule as a realtor is if you hired me you can fire me. How did you find this real estate agent? Did you ask them if this is their full time job? How many transaction have they completed in the last year ? You need to interview them why they think you should hire them as a buyers agent. Clearly this agent is creating a bad name for other professional FULL TIME realtors. Many agents like the idea of binding a buyer in a "buyers agent contract" and then leaving the buyer to pretty much find their ideal property on their own. This is not how it is. The agent should have a thorough discussion with you and tailor a search to meet your guidelines for your perfect property and when these properties become available they get emailed to you or if you do not have access to the internet a phone call is made to brief you on what is available. If something catches your eye an appointment is made and you are accompanied by your agent to view the subject property. A buyers agent has a fiduciary responsibility to their client and for them to be paid procuring cause has to be established with your buyers agent. I hope this little info helps moving forward and you find your ideal property. There is so many to chose and the prices could not be any better. Good Luck. A local Dorchester Realtor.

I agree that finding properties is the least important skill of a buyer's agent. I am much more savvy at computers than my real estate agent - and identified new properties before my agent did. But my agent was invaluable with the rest of the process: setting up appointments to see properties I emailed her, providing area comps, helping me draft up a purchase and sales agreement, and assisting me through the inspection and re-negotiation process. She also personally knew a lot of local sellers agents - and knew which ones were reputable and which ones were less than honest. She even helped me with issues that arose after the closing date.

Unless you are very experienced in real estate, I would strongly recommend having a buyer's agent assist you in the process. It is worthwhile checking references, though, before signing a contract.

If you feel that your agent will continue to be unhelpful, I agree about sending an email or letter terminating the relationship. I respect that you feel ethically obligated, but I don't believe you are legally obligated as you have not signed the contract.

Incentive alignment-
Correct me if I'm wrong, but unless you have found on the MLS a flat fee MLS listing which is about roughly 3% commission total. 1% to the seller's RE firm for putting up the listing, and 2% for a buyers agent if applicable, you're still 'paying' 5.5-6% on commission on the purchase price of your home which ALL goes to the seller's agent. If you did find this one type of listing yourself, you'd only be 'paying' the 1% to the listing firm.

So in reality, you're not saving yourself any money since the sellers agent is getting the entire commission which was agreed upon at the time of listing the house for sale.

We actually got CASH back- with a commission rebate. Your method isn't very clear since the MLS listings all have commission no matter what and it's part of your purchase price.

"Better yet, skip the buyer agent route all together and save the 2.5% on the purchase price."

Just how will you save 2.5%? If you don't use a buyers agent, the listing agent keeps the entire commission. The listing agent had a contract with the seller to earn a stated commission, long before a buyer came along. That amount has nothing to do with whether the buyer has an agent or not. Some discount brokerages will negotiate a 4% commission if another agency brings in a buyer. But that is not the norm in full service agencies. If you deal with a discount agency, read the fine print, for you are receiving discount services.

In deals where only one side has an agent, it is ALWAYS more work for the one agent in the deal. And as a seller's agent I would never negotiate less than 5% to do both sides and my reason is this: you never know how savvy the buyer is going to be. I have found that most of the time buyers (especially first time) need a lot of handholding and have no idea how to move through the process, so there I am working with both sides to get them through it. As a licensed professional, I must pay careful attention to every detail because if I don't and something goes wrong or is not disclosed, I stand to lose my license.

I have read postings on this blog complaining that agents have no value and serve no purpose. That is just baloney. Most buyers and sellers don't have time to steer a deal through the process. It is not as easy as some posters make it out to be. Many sales have complicated roadblocks. The agent and attorney work together to get through those roadblocks. No real estate attorney I have ever worked with will do any part of a realtor's job . Their job is to draw up the P&S, research title and prepare for the closing.

There is a small percentage of people who are very capable and have the time to sell their own house or buy without help from an agent. Great! They *should* use a discount brokerage. Good for you saving money. I'm all for it.

I take great pride in my work as an agent. I really enjoy what I do. I have helped many people and I look forward to helping many more.

In regard to "Bidding Wars? Quick Sales? It's Happening!", this all seems to be related to the number of sellers in denial of reality, not the factors listed in the article. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. Normalizing for location and age and quality of home, If everyone prices at 3X the market clearing price, and you price at the market clearing price, which house will sell? Forget the hocus pocus and staging thoughts, it all comes down to price and that market clearing price is where? Much much lower than in 2006!

I would like to respond to Katt who states "that there is no need for a buyer agent with the internet these days, and the only reason they used one was to get a rebate". Well Katt, I am sorry to inform you but you have absoulely no idea what a buyer agent does. It has little to do with finding the "perfect house". That is a very small part of the job description. A buyer agent finds you a home, works FOR YOU, not against you like the seller agent, and negotiates the best price and terms in your favor. A buyer agent will tell you about properties before they become public knowledge and a very good buyers agent will assist you in finding the best affiliates for financing, insurance, home inspection, etc.
All of these clueless people out there who call the listing agent don't even realize that the listing agent is trying to get all the best terms and price for their seller. Like any other profession, there are bad and irreputable buyer agents out there that tarnish the reputation of all the others that go above and beyond their roles to help a buyer.
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I worked as a mortgage broker for over 15 years in the Boston area. In addition, I have acquired many properties. My experience has been that realtors in general offer little or no value whatsoever. The realtor above who mentions the difficulty of navigating "through the process" is just trying to scare people. The process is really quite straightforward, the price is negotiated, an inspection is done, financing is lined up, title worl is completed and you close. Any problems I have seen have been resolved fairly easily. Remember realtors are UHS (used house salespeople), their ONLY interest is in generating a fee. Try to avoid using realtors whenever possible, go the FSBO route if you can and save yourself the
b.s. from the realtors and the 5-6% fee for very little value. Many of my best deals have been from buying FSBO or from the IRS/FDIC directly.

First, I agree with the comments made by Sally and Lisa and good experience.... Virtually all buyers now use the internet to search for homes, then contact an agent to go see it. As is evident in some of the comments here, I find many buyers to be naive about the process and the value of a using buyer's agent vs the seller's agent, as well as about the commission structure. I suspect these are the ones most negative about the agents at the end of a transaction (or when one falls apart).

But the intitial question was about dumping an agent. A couple of comments on this:
The agent should not assume that contract was signed and is in effect without a copy of it, if that was indeed a real contract (I don't know many agents who actually do that anymore). Could it have been the Mandatory Disclosure Statement which we are required to give all customers at first meeting? That's not a contract, but it is a legal document and I find many who are leery about signing it even though it says "not a contract" at the top.

The buyer is admirable because he/she wants to be fair to the agent. Sending an email is all that needs to be done - a phone call would be nice but email is easier. But here's a suggestion - if you see something that interests you, give this agent a call for a showing or for additional information. If you get a quick and comprehensive response keep going, but if she ignores you or you don't like the answer then move on. BUT - as mentioned by other posters, seriously consider having an agent working for you and not the seller (tip - you don't need a formal contract for that ) because there's a lot more involved than just signing an offer check.

Katt, Thanks for the comment. To clarify on my prior post, I did use a fee based guy who received a commission as part of the transaction, then rebated back the entire commission to me (I paid him hourly as we went along). I found him to be more helpful and less biased (to get me in the most expensive homes as quickly as possible) than each of the commission based realtors with whom I'd worked.

Sally, a lot of realtors like to make the claim that "if you don't use one of us, the entire 5% just goes to the seller's realtor." Come on, that's misleading and not really a good defense of a profession. There are a ton of answers to this, getting a commission rebate is probably the easiest, but there are certainly other answers (ie just making your offer 2.5% less than what it would have been, then telling the seller to tell his agent he only gets to keep the same 2.5%). The seller's agent is bound by his license to deliver that message to his client.

The basic problem here is with home prices in Boston & the surrounding area what they are, for buyer's agents to deliver $10k, $20k or more in value is a tough proposition.

some buyers agents perform a very useful function for many buyers, no doubt.

But please, lets keep the descriptions within reality. It's work, and it require knowledge, but isn't exactly the hardest job I am familiar with. No need to overstate the case.

incentivealignment ,

I'm not being misleading at all. The seller and the seller's agent have a contract to pay a commission to the agent from the sale of the property. This commission, these days, is almost always 5%. It used to be 6%. Half goes to a cooperating broker. If there is no such broker, the seller's agent keeps all the commission.

"telling the seller to tell his agent he only gets to keep the same 2.5%". Baloney! The seller and the agent already have a contract. Saying that the buyer has the power to break that contract is just not true! Where do you come up with this stuff??

Sally, I'm not arguing anyone can or should break a contract. But I think you'd agree all real estate is a negotiation, and in markets like these everyone makes 'sacrifices' to get deals done, including both sellers and their agents.

You've never worked on a transaction where you took less than the agreed commission to get a deal done?

In this case, if you were listing a house at $100 and a buyer came to you at $97.5 but with the caveat there was no buyer broker to be compensated, would you really insist to your client that, sorry, this offer didn't hit your asking price because according to our contract you need to pay me 2x what you would have paid otherwise, even though I'm not doing any additional work?

Anyway, we could debate negotiation tactics all day - but as above, using a fee-based advisor who offers commission rebates is the easiest way to save some of that 2.5% ...

Let's say the buyer wanted to purchase one of the homes the agent showed him/her....They I would say he/she has to purchase through the agent, otherwise your free and clear to break up with her. must be 50 ways to leave your agent.

What most buyers don't understand is that a buyer's agent SIGNIFICANTLY weakens their offer with the seller in many cases. If the seller is selling on their own, they have to pay your broker anywhere from 2-3% (thousands of dollars). That weakens your offer by exactly that amount.

Of course if you're buying a house that's being sold through a realtor and you're not using a buyer's agent, then the seller's agent will be totally psyched because they get to pocket the entire commission. I strongly advise, as someone did above - that you use the internet and do it yourself if you have any confidence or competence in negotiation. Lots of people don't, so for many a realtor is certainly a valid choice.

A number of the comments posted here illustrate how many don't understand the nature of real estate contracts.

First, a buyer cannot change a contract the seller has with his/her agent. If the contract reads 5% of net sale price, than that's what they'll pay. It is possible to renegotiate a contract, of course, but not on an offer already in hand. But that's the seller's issue, and should be irrelevant to the buyer.

If an agent shows a buyer a property, and the buyer decides to make an offer without that agent's involvement, a commission may still be due that agent because of "procuring cause." Lots of court cases on these situations.

There are fee-based agents/facilitators who will "refund" some of the buyer agent commission to the buyer - Redfin is one of those operations. But note that the buyer does most of the work (and also note that their commission refund number is always based on a 6% commission, not the standard 5% in this area, so is almost always exaggerated). Certainly something for motivated and energetic buyers to check out.

FSBO sellers are under no obligation to pay a commission to a buyer's agent. Some will note their willingness to pay one in their ad and will get traffic from agents, and some don't and will only see agents who are being paid by the buyer. And some of us shy away from FSBO sellers because you have to hold their hand through the transaction to get it to closing - they don't know what to do but don't trust you because you're working for the buyer.

Oh yeah - the agent who handles both sides of a transaction IS doing more work than if she just had the selling side, but I agree that it's not twice as much work. I usually tell my sellers (and write in the contract) that I will give them a 1.5% discount if I represent the buyer in the deal....but of course that's none of the buyer's business.