The more the merrier?

I once had a buyer, who was working with me but told me she was working with another agent. I explained that we were both using the same MLS, both new the area, and that we were duplicating efforts. I asked her if she would be willing to make a commitment to work with me, and she said that she was not going to commit to any one agent, and that "it's the chance you have to take" to get my business. I did not call her again, and if she calls me again, I will ask her to sign a contract, something I never have to do.

Real Estate has to be one of the most backwards and least consumer friendly businesses out there. We Realtors feel that we have the right to lock up a buyer and try to prevent them from using someone else. Imagine any other industry which has its salespeople attempting to do this? My friends in the computer industry spend many hours and many months writing RFP’s, RFI’s, demonstrating proof of concept for the technology they’re trying to sell to a prospective customer, taking the client out to lunch and dinner, bringing them to corporate headquarters for briefings, etc. etc. Not once do they push a piece of paper in front of a client which tells them not to look at the competition! There is a supple corruption which takes over when any salesperson thinks that they have a client who is “locked up”. The NAR and the Brokers allowed this to happen when they went from a broker centered model to an agent centered model back in the 1980’s, whereby the marketing and advertising costs for the broker were pushed onto the agent, who isn’t even paid a salary or expenses. Since we do not get paid until we sell something, I’ve witnessed countless unprofessional and unethical behaviors throughout the years, especially when the market goes sour.

When I put my consumer hat on, I think it is in the best interests of the buyer to use a Realtor who lives in the town in which they wish to buy into. I would also recommend that they give the Realtor a very short period of time to see how wide and how deep their industry knowledge, town/city knowledge, sales and negotiation skills are. I would ask the Realtor for “case studies” – different stories and examples which they could describe any number of sales situations they’ve been involved in where they saved the deal from the jaws of defeat and how they had solved the problem. I would also recommend them using different Realtors if they are looking in multiple towns, unless the towns are contiguous.

D. needs to interview two or three real estate buyer agencies to find a buyer agent that can legally and ethically work in her best interest throughout her home search and purchase. Not all real estate agencies/broker/agents can guaranty they won’t work for the seller and/or against the buyer.
Some agents say it’ll cost a buyer nothing to use them. This usually means the agent will only show you properties that offer to compensate them whether the buyer is a customer or client. In real estate, clients are fully represented and buyers are not. Some consumers don’t take the time to learn about real estate consumer representation and are shocked when the agent they believed was working in the best interest was not. This is irresponsible on their part and irresponsible on the part of the agency/broker/agent for not explaining what they can and cannot do for the consumer- and why!
D. should do her homework and choose the right agent for her family so she can be open about their needs and wants with an agent she can trust. And so the agent can commit to working on her behalf.
Sounds like D. probably haven’t even seen a Massachusetts Mandatory Licensee Consumer Relationship Disclosure. She hasn’t met any agent in person. That’s when the law states agents must present the disclosure.
No seller’s real estate agency/broker/agent will list a seller’s property without a written agreement to do so. D. as a buyer, you deserve the same respect and commitment from a dedicated buyer’s agency/broker/agent.
Share a buyer? Sharing only happens when all parties know about the each other and agree for some reason to work that way. If you come up with a good reason let me know.
Michael Berry

I'd buy a beer for Agent West if I knew who you were. I was a successful executive recruiter in another life and I assure all of you in real estate that EVEN when my clients had paid me a retainer of 10's of thousands of dollars to find them the perfect hire, they STILL considered other candidates presented to them by my competition. On an exceptionally rare occasion a client even hired the person referred by the competition. Guess what? I didn't argue for the fee, because I knew it was never about "me" and "my commitment", but rather about THEIR (the clients) need and I was smart enough to know that at least on that occasion I didn't do my job as well as someone a little more connected or hungry.

"Share"??? Are you kidding me? I hate to be so blunt, but it is NOT about you, Mr or Mrs Buyers Agent - it's about ME, the buyer.

This is just another aspect of why the usefulness of Realtors is slowly being taken away... not a bad thing in the slightest... but all Realtors seem to do now is open the door at showings.

I think most of my colleagues in the real estate industry would prefer not to "share" buyer clients. You put in just as much time and effort with half the expectation of being compensated. I agree with Rona that this could adversely impact the buyers. Buyer clients should understand that they will get the same level of loyalty that they give. If they are half-hearted about it, their agent likely will be, as well. The vast majority of agents I know, including myself, are committed to finding their buyer clients the best home for their needs. They become fiercely loyal to their buyer clients if they know the client is in it with them for the long haul. I think it becomes clear very quickly if an agent is pushing a property on their client that may not be a good fit simply to make the commission. My biggest reward as a Realtor is seeing a happy family in a new home and knowing I played a part in getting them there. I know I am going to invest many hours, months and sometimes even years helping my buyer clients, so I do expect some loyalty from them. If buyer clients begin working with an agent and it becomes clear the partnership is not a good fit, it's very simple for the buyers to politely tell the agent that the relastionhip is not working out. Although it is a business relationship, personality style and fit do play an important role. I would encourage buyers to interview agents and choose just one with whom to work.

Brad and others have no idea what the usefulness of real estate agents is because they have never worked with a useful one. Showing property is the easy part of my job (although frequently a waste of time.) The value of a qualified agent is his/her facility with valuation and negotiation, and in a seller's agent's case, marketing. Consumers that can do these things themselves should do so. Consumers that can't, should hire someone.

Perceptive Listener, Consumers need to choose the quality of who they hire; that is on them. The question on the table is whether consumers get better quality by playing the field or hiring a single agent. Bluntly, I get to choose who I work for; that is about me. As a successful executive recruiter, you should know that.

How I lost $500,000 by my loyalty to a Realtor, though in the end, I was to blame. Scenario: While working as a national accounts sales manager for a Fortune 100 company, I was transferred to Santa Monica in 1996. A friend of mine, who is a well respected Attorney and lived in L.A., gave me the name of his Realtor, who was in her late 50’s, had a Harvard degree in the Social Sciences, was a Realtor for 20 years, a “top producer” and worked off of referrals, as her husband was a big named Professor at UCLA. I arrived in CA. with the ability to make an all cash offer around $1M, which was a lot of money in those days. I had majored in Architecture and had bought and sold a number of homes in a number of States where I had once lived, so I told her exactly what I was looking for, my time frame (immediate) and my ability to buy.

In 1996, MLS listings were not on the Internet and as I was traveling every week for my job, I relied on her to find properties for me. She knew nothing about using email (this is 1996 and most Realtors didn’t have a computer on their desk, only shared computers in the office), so she was difficult for me to reach while I was on the road. When I would return, she’d drive me around to look at properties which her office had and hardly any fit the criteria I was looking to buy.

After several weeks of this and my having to stay in a Hotel while my belongings were back in Illinois, I was so fed up that I was going to get rid of her and use someone else, but I didn’t want to cause any hard feelings between she and my friend and as a salesperson, I still felt guilty about using someone else. I have a high degree of ethics and I also didn’t like it when my prospects turned around and chose one of my competitors. I hung in and hung in until my company told me that they weren’t going to pay for my Hotel, so I rented an apartment for a 1 year lease.

Long story short, CA. Real Estate prices exploded throughout late 1996 and 1997. When my lease ended, all the homes I had looked at before were at least $350K higher than last year and I thought that prices would stabilize, so I signed a new lease. 1998 was worse, as prices continued to go in a linear fashion, so by the time I bought a home in 1999, in the price range I originally looked at in 1996, homes were now $1.5M! Looking back, I made a huge mistake being loyal to one Realtor, all due to not wanting to make waves and having too large a sales territory and too much pressure. In the end, I am to blame, and now that I am a Realtor, I would almost never recommend a buyer being locked in with one Agent.

I feel sorry for Agent West when he/she was a consumer, as I’ve seen similar situations happen by a buyer – or seller – sticking and sticking with an Agent who is very average and who spends most of their work time trying to find new clients. We have homes lingering on the market for 9 or 12 months or more and the sellers still stay with and relist their home with the same Realtor. That is the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different outcome.

When I asked one of my Out of State elderly relatives on why she stuck with her Listing Agent for over 2 years, who had over priced the home (against her wishes), took a few out of focus pictures and only put the home on MLS for 6%, she said that the Agent was her friend and that she didn’t “want to get into it”. She was clearly intimidated and not an assertive person.

As a Realtor, I would love the idea of locking up a prospect with a buyer/broker agreement, whereby the buyer will pay me a commission whether or not they purchase a home from me for a specified period of time. In most instances the agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on and it can be broken by the buyer, but most buyers don’t know this and/or feel they are held hostage by this agreement so they don’t even try. They think that nearly all Realtors are the same anyway, so why switch? I happen to sell in a State which doesn’t use buyer/broker agreements. We have them, but no one uses them.

Loyalty is a 2 way street and a buyer and their Agent should be on the same page. However, when I look around my office, I see that nearly every Agent (even the hugely successful ones making over $1M per year) had never been in sales before. One had been a greeting card designer, one a Nurse, one a Schoolteacher, one a Pharmacist. High empathy and very verbal, but their negotiation skills are pretty poor. In 3 of the cases, each is married to a spouse who is a top builder, Lawyer or Doctor, so they work by referrals.

Be that as it may, not one of them could get a high level sales position at a major company, as all they can do is relationship selling and fill out forms. Other Agents in my office are mainly people who failed at other professions, including myself, or are working part time and raising their school aged children. All in all, I would recommend buyers to be loyal to their Realtor for a short period of time and relock and reload if they are not getting the service (and results) that they need.

I think buyer clients who are happy with their agents and feel listened to and well cared for, stay with that one agent. If they feel uneasy they look elsewhere.

The agent is mostly a person to get me in the door. I have a lawyer for all the paper work. And well with negotiation I would rather do that myself than to trust a third party but sadly pretty much everything requires the buyer's agent. I think a better model is for the seller's agent to work on commission but the buyer's agent to work on a flat fee. Then I would feel slightly better about how tough they negotiate on my behalf, but then again maybe not since they know what their fee is. I am not a very trusting person when it comes to someone negotiating for me when their pay day is tied to the final outcome of the price. As more and more sales prices are online and easily accessible the usefulness of an agent will decrease. So I expect the agents to fight advances tooth and nail.

Right now I am looking and I look at stuff on line then map it to see if it is in what appears to be a deseriable area and then if so I do a drive by. So by the time I am looking at houses it is maybe 5-10 max. I am doing all the work, as is the selling agent if they are marketing correctly, so I can see their commision. But I find less use for a buyer's agent and that is just a fact of life. No agent has ever asked what I was looking for in terms of number of rooms, sq. ft, location etc, they give me a user id and password and I do it myself. That is a lot of service there. I have yet to have one suggest houses based on my criteria.

somebody should tell D. it is a terrible time to buy. They should rent instead;, what if their child does not like his/her school, then thay have purchased a declining, illiquid, high transaction-cost, leveraged, "asset" that could be a huge financial albatross for them. Sounds like a proposition fraught with risk, and little real benefit...

Why even think about buying, rent. From the Saturday NY Times.

Even the federal government has projected price decreases through 2010. As a baseline, the stress tests recently performed on big banks included a total fall in housing prices of 41 percent from 2006 through 2010. Their “more adverse” forecast projected a drop of 48 percent — suggesting that important housing ratios, like price to rent, and price to construction cost — would fall to their lowest levels in 20 years.

Written contracts clarify agreements between the parties involved. If a consumer doesn’t like the terms of an agreement, change the terms. If real estate professionals and consumers don’t have written agreements how do they hold each other accountable?

A listing/marketing agency WILL NOT represent a seller without a written contract. Why? To protect themselves and the consumer? Most list/marketing agencies stopped working in the best interest of sellers in 2005 when they started practicing designated agency instead of sub-agency. Designated agency allows these companies to practice dual agency while designating their agents as seller agents and buyer agents for their company’s listings.

Remember, contracts/agreements are with the broker of the company, not individual agents. Agents/brokers are bound to practice the type of agency the real estate company chooses to operate as. No more and no less.
A dual/designated agency can be neutral to both seller and buyer but benefit from collecting both sides of the commission. Fair? Representation?

A list agent can get both sides of a commission while representing a seller-client 100% and treating a buyer-customer “fairly”. A list agent can get both sides of a commission while representing the seller-client 100% and treating a buyer-customer “fairly”.
“If it’s not in writing it never happened” and “buyer beware” are two terms in real estate that will still be around long after we are not.

There are not enough buyer agencies providing 100% buyer agency in Massachusetts. There wouldn’t be any buyer representation in Massachusetts if consumers and consumer advocates didn’t start insisting on buyer representation. The results to date are the 2005 real estate representation laws. Can we do better? I think so. Who’s fighting for laws that benefit homebuyers? Agencies like MABA (Massachusetts Association of Buyer Agents), NAEBA (National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents) and the few 100% Buyer Agencies in Massachusetts.
Michael Berry

Feels to me as if a lot of the rancor against realtors is assuming realtors lock in buyers against competition -- such as Agent West's software company example -- but the analysis is lacking. There *is* competition -- buyers look around at various agents, interview various agents, consider the agent's credentials and experience and overall "fit," and listen to the agent's proposal. If a buyer does his or her due diligence, this mirrors Agent West's software company analogy: agents competiting to get the business. Like in software, however, once a contract is signed, you are exclusive. Just as in the software sales example (the buyer eventually decides on a software system and signs a contract for sales and service). And in realtor contracts, as elsewhere, there are ways to terminate the agreement. And a buyer should agree only to a short agreement anyway -- 3 months at most.

If a buyer does not do his or her due diligence and just goes with whomever is close/was referred by a friend (who may have different needs and priorities about selling abd buying)/etc., that is not a problem with the industry but with the buyer.

I am not and have never been (and do not want to be) a realtor. But if I am going to be taking up someone's weekend and night and day time for weeks and perhaps months on end, and if I expect them to give me their attention, I will absolutely do them the courtesy of actually giving them my business. But again, this assumes I have done my own due diligence and had several agents I looked at and interviewed, etc. That initial stage is where the competition happens (or shouldl, if the buyer is smart).

Michael Berry - I'm at a loss as to how an agreement with a Buyers Agent helps me in holding them 'accountable'. What exactly to I get out of it if they fail vs. what do they get out of it if I fail? Perhaps we have a different understanding of what 'accountable' looks like in that regard. And lest anyone say we both have the right to move on to working with other folks, my response to that is this; why even have me sign the dang document if it's little more than self serving for the agent?!

Personally, I expect *any* agent I work with to act with honesty and integrity and they need not be an exclusive agent on either side of the fence.

"The question on the table is whether consumers get better quality by playing the field or hiring a single agent. "

Personally, I'm not too anxious to spend a lot of time with a buyer customer who is talking to multiple agents. And if the customer starts the relationship by lying about their dealings with others, then that gives me a lot of insight into how much I should trust anything else they say. Trust and loyalty go both ways.

Mr./Ms. Perceptive Listener,

Accountability: Most people would agree a written agreement/contract means more than an oral agreement/contract. A written agreement/contract between a consumer and a seller or buyer agent/agency should clarify their expectations and what will happen if they are not met. If it doesn’t- include it- so the parties involved can be held accountable.
It’s harder to hold anyone accountable to an oral agreement/contract. Besides people hear and perceive things differently. So who’s right and who’s wrong? I thought you meant?

If expectations or agreements/contracts aren’t fulfilled and a consumer feels they were mistreated or misrepresented they should contact The Board of Registration of Real Estate Brokers & Salespersons. This is the same agency consumers check to see if a real estate professional has any current or past complaints against them.

Working with other folks: This is like noncommittal dating. Fun, exiting and exhausting. But one usually finds out what they’re personally all about and what they want. Or we’d at least hope so.
Exclusive Buyer Representation: This is more like a short term marriage. It involves trust, loyalty and agency representation.

As stated in another post I responded to: not all real estate agencies/broker/agents can legally and ethically provide you with the best type of representation for your particular circumstances. It’s the consumer’s responsibility to decide what type of real estate agency/broker/agent is best for them.

Agents go to work for the same reason everyone else does. To get paid. Real estate representation is not charity work.
If you want to play the field and take the risk of ending up with an agent with obligations adverse to your needs, go for it. If you want an agent you can trust to be loyal to you throughout your home search and purchase, choose that one.

My feeling is the first three steps in selling or buying a home is to make sure you can financially sell or buy, choose the right agency/broker/agent that can legally and ethically work in your best interest throughout your sale or your purchase without conflict of interest, and to start marketing the home or searching for your home.