It’s been about 30 days since the buyer rule has happened, I thought I would give an update. I am a Realtor, and I primarily work as a listing agent, it’s probably 80% of all transactions. I stay very busy to the point where I don’t advertise myself, It’s all word-of-mouth. I close about 110 properties a year, roughly $20 million. I live in an affordable area so I encounter a lot of first-time buyers.
The listing agreement is signed first. I’ve decided I will not act as a dual agent on any transaction from here on out. I want to be able to represent the seller to the best of my ability, as they are still the one who is paying all of my commission, and sought me out first. I charge two different rates, what I charge to list, and what I charge to list and have an unrepresented buyer and perform the ministerial duties needed.
The first transaction with an unrepresented buyer is getting ready to close. I’m seeing there are so many ways this thing can go sideways. At the start, I had my transaction coordinator go ahead and send out the email that outlines all of the dates and deadlines, and then since they’re unrepresented, they took it from there. I CC’d the title company and lender (we are not an attorney state) and made sure they had buyers info for the transaction.
The actual contract negotiation was extremely one-sided, because the buyer told me they had to move fast and they really liked the property. The preapproval they sent was for 100k more than the purchase price, so we countered back full price no closing cost, and they took it.
The buyer missed the earnest money deposit deadline by 3 days. Don’t drop that in the mail! Seller could have kicked the contract but decided to give time instead. Buyer ordered a home inspection, completely ignoring the septic, well, gas, termite, radon. Cool, very easy negotiation for my seller.
They called me panicked about insurance. That deadline is passed so they are now getting whatever insurance they can. Financing deadline is passed, so earnest money is now nonrefundable. On the counter offer I told the seller let’s double it and tighten it up.
Didn’t order a survey.
Didn’t add the HOA rider.
Missed or didn’t care the roof has 2-5 years of life left so didn’t ask for that.
All of these things add up to be far more than the 2.5-3% a buyers agent charges around here. Seller was counting on paying that, pretty happy they saved 1.5%. While it was not a ton of additional work on my side, it IS a lot of liability. On the next one, what happens if buyer missed the earnest money deadline, and the seller decides to kick the contract out, then the buyer gets upset that I didn’t remind them a second time to deposit the check in person? Or when they send me the inspection report and I see several large items that they didn’t ask for, it’s not my responsibility to guide them. I can already see a disgruntled buyer starting a lawsuit for me doing my job, which is to represent the seller interests only.
I have two more that are currently under contract where I’m representing the seller and buyer is unrepresented, I will be curious to see if buyer unforced errors like this continue.
From my perspective - which is one where I actually make MORE money if the buyer is unrepresented - please, please hire a competent agent to represent you. There is no reason a first time buyer should attempt this in an effort to “save” money.