About Exclusive Buyer's Agents

If you're buying a home, you want an agency that has your best interest 100% in mind. You don't need your agent having hidden agendas, including helping you to buy particular homes (rather than the best home for you!) or guiding you to pay more rather than less for your home. There are three basic scenarios you may run into when looking for agents. We'll use these scenarios to explain why an Exclusive Buyer's Agent is your very best choice.

STOP!

First, if you're interested in buying a home and you'd like the help of a professional agent (see more details below about why this can save you money and headaches!), find one before you start looking! Otherwise, you'll end up calling the name on the sign in front of a house and this is the worst possible scenario. That is the seller's agent, and that agent is obliged to do everything possible for the seller -- NOT for YOU! That agent will try to get the highest possible selling price, and will use everything you tell her to the seller's advantage. She will not want you to notice anything that's questionable about the house. She wants to make the sale. Avoid at all costs!

CAUTION!

Second, you may run into a dual agent or a buyer's agent (not exclusive). Both can be to your disadvantage, though this is certainly a better scenario than working with a seller's agent.

A dual agent is someone who will claim to be a neutral agent helping with the sales transaction. If true to his word, a dual agent will not do everything in his power to find problems within a home; he will not work to get you the best price on the home; he will sit back, let you find what you need to on your own, then will take money from both sides of the transaction, since he's acted as agent for buyer and seller. Neither side benefits from this kind of agent.

A buyer's agent (not exclusive) may appear to be only on your side. However, that agent is working for a real estate broker that buys AND sells homes. This means that the buyer's agent has an incentive to sell you certain homes -- those homes listed by the broker. When she does, the broker gets a cut from both buyer and seller. In this case, you may someone working on your behalf on certain homes, but who may also be pushing you in the direction of listed homes and may have an incentive to get you buying those homes rather than looking for every possible flaw and getting what is truly the best value for you.

GO!

Finally, you may opt to buy a home with an exclusive buyer's agent. This kind of agent never lists homes, so he never has a reason to push one home over another. This kind of agent only takes the standard realtor fee from the buyer's side of the transaction, so he's never "double dipping". (Again, no incentive to push you towards certain homes. And … like most agents, his fee can be paid 100% at the time of closing. There are no out-of-pocket costs.)

Furthermore, an exclusive buyer's agent ONLY helps to BUY homes so he is an expert at learning about homes, figuring out their true value, and helping you to negotiate the best possible deal on the home that's most suited to you. He should be able to help you learn about the neighborhood and the city; the schools; how long the home has been on the market; whether it's asking price has dropped; what reason the seller is selling the place, if this information is available; whether other offers have come in, if this is available; and more.

He'll also help you to walk through the home and look for potential problem areas, or even things that add extra value to the home. He may be able to point things out to you that make you want to look elsewhere so that you don't face the expense of bringing in an inspector who will simply point out the same problem!

By helping you analyze the real worth of a place and by saving you the cost and headache of going through one inspection after another, an exclusive buyer's agent can actually save you time and money. This kind of agent will often pay for his own fees -- which don't ever need to be out of pocket! -- many times over.

In short, an EBA once summarized the job of exclusive buyer's agents very well when he said that they help to: Locate, Evaluate, and Negotiate. I just add to that, we do all this without the bias or hidden agendas of other agents and brokers, and that's what makes us a terrific choice for every buyer out there.

Want to get your own EBA right now? Contact us today!