As a buyer, how can I leverage new Realtor commission rules for my benefit?

[Anonymous]

Real estate agents are a joke of a job. Been fooling people for years. The joke is over now they will have to go out and get a real job now……

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want the lowest fee, just don't use a buyer's agent at all. It's not that complicated.

+1 Just contact the listing agent. Tell them you're an unrepresented buyer and you want to see the property. Refuse to sign any agreement for them or anyone else to represent you.

Wrote two contracts for unrepresented buyers on Tuesday and played them off each other. I even made one drop the VA financing even though the interest rate was better. After I squeezed them dry, the sellers did about $73,000 more than the best comp from June This is going to be a lot better for sellers because the buyers are easy to manipulate. I will take unrepresented buyers any day.

Are you kidding? I’ve never had a buyers agent do anything but say “buy now” and roll over and show a belly for the deal.

Here’s a clue: the buyers agent was paid by the “deal” or the seller — they were never working for the buyer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Real estate agents are a joke of a job. Been fooling people for years. The joke is over now they will have to go out and get a real job now……

When will this become reality? When will realtors really stop being a thing? How do regular people see the houses that haven’t hit the market yet? I think anyone who has purchased a house since realtors were invented should be compensated for that racket.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want the lowest fee, just don't use a buyer's agent at all. It's not that complicated.

+1 Just contact the listing agent. Tell them you're an unrepresented buyer and you want to see the property. Refuse to sign any agreement for them or anyone else to represent you.

Wrote two contracts for unrepresented buyers on Tuesday and played them off each other. I even made one drop the VA financing even though the interest rate was better. After I squeezed them dry, the sellers did about $73,000 more than the best comp from June This is going to be a lot better for sellers because the buyers are easy to manipulate. I will take unrepresented buyers any day.

You mean, because there were no buyers agents there to advise their clients to offer above asking, with escalation clauses, and to waive inspection and all other contingencies? That kind of expert advice?

They were unrepresented and I gave them no advice. For their offer to be considered they had to waive all contingencies. That's why one buyer had to change from VA to conventional financing because he could not waive the appraisal contingency. No escalation clauses. I did several rounds of best and final offers until both reached top of the loan for which they qualified.

Is this post from 2021? You must have listed way low to get this kind of interest

“You” didn’t get them to drop the VA financing, the appraisal and competing offers did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want the lowest fee, just don't use a buyer's agent at all. It's not that complicated.

+1 Just contact the listing agent. Tell them you're an unrepresented buyer and you want to see the property. Refuse to sign any agreement for them or anyone else to represent you.

Wrote two contracts for unrepresented buyers on Tuesday and played them off each other. I even made one drop the VA financing even though the interest rate was better. After I squeezed them dry, the sellers did about $73,000 more than the best comp from June This is going to be a lot better for sellers because the buyers are easy to manipulate. I will take unrepresented buyers any day.

This. Unrepresented buyers (I don't care how smart they think they are, or if they have a real estate attorney who can read a contract) are at a huge disadvantage. Period. I am a listing agent primarily, and I can tell you an unrepresented buyer, is rarely getting a better deal than if you had representation and often is not winning the contract if you are in a multiple-offer situation, No matter what all these anonymous posters say. I have seen it time and time again. I have seen highly skilled and hard working buyers agents literally make the difference in getting clients into a home. I'm sure there will be people on here who SWEAR otherwise or say I am biased, but I live this everyday and know how transactions play out. I can tell you going unrepresented without a *skilled realtor* (not just anyone) puts you at a disadvantage in many ways. If you think buying a home is like buying a car, you are wrong.

What exactly are realtor “skills”?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want the lowest fee, just don't use a buyer's agent at all. It's not that complicated.

+1 Just contact the listing agent. Tell them you're an unrepresented buyer and you want to see the property. Refuse to sign any agreement for them or anyone else to represent you.

Wrote two contracts for unrepresented buyers on Tuesday and played them off each other. I even made one drop the VA financing even though the interest rate was better. After I squeezed them dry, the sellers did about $73,000 more than the best comp from June This is going to be a lot better for sellers because the buyers are easy to manipulate. I will take unrepresented buyers any day.

This. Unrepresented buyers (I don't care how smart they think they are, or if they have a real estate attorney who can read a contract) are at a huge disadvantage. Period. I am a listing agent primarily, and I can tell you an unrepresented buyer, is rarely getting a better deal than if you had representation and often is not winning the contract if you are in a multiple-offer situation, No matter what all these anonymous posters say. I have seen it time and time again. I have seen highly skilled and hard working buyers agents literally make the difference in getting clients into a home. I'm sure there will be people on here who SWEAR otherwise or say I am biased, but I live this everyday and know how transactions play out. I can tell you going unrepresented without a *skilled realtor* (not just anyone) puts you at a disadvantage in many ways. If you think buying a home is like buying a car, you are wrong.

Maybe you are right. But the problem is that 90% of realtors are not very skilled. 90% of buyers aren’t getting the benefits of the skilled realtor you are talking about. They will be better off not paying these high realtor fees.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to let everyone in on a secret. It's the secret that agents don't want you to know. It will help you win any house. Agents charge tens of thousands for this secret but for this limited time, I'm going to let all of you in on the secret. You ready? Get excited, because here it is. The secret to winning any house is as follows:

Waive all contingencies and bid higher than everyone else.

Using this valuable, proprietary secret, you'll now be in a position to win any house that you're interested in.

You remind me of the saying...That the problem in the world is that stupid people are
so confident and the intelligent ones are filled with doubt. No shit, waive contingencies and bid high but if you think that is all there is to it, you will definitely learn that lesson when you lose in multiple offer situations again and again.

You can’t lose if you make the highest bid and waive all contingencies. You can’t.

[Anonymous]

OP, the answer to question is probably "find a cheap buyer's agent". Before, there was limited benefit to shopping around, since sellers committed to paying a buyer commission upon listing a house. Really, the only way for a buyer to save money was to find an agent willing to rebate a portion of the commission. Now you can simply pay less to begin with, meaning a rebate is unnecessary and you will also have a more competitive offer.

Consider the example of a $1M house. Before, it would may listed with a 2.5% buyer agent fee. To save this money, you would have needed to find an agent willing to rebate you some of the commission, let's say half. Then, if you make a $1M offer, you'd get a rebate of $12,500. Now, you can simply pay the same agent $12,500 and make an offer for $975K. Both you and the seller are equally well off as under the old system, but your offer is $25K below one that requests an inflated buyer agent concession. Or you can offer $987,500 with a $12,500 concession to pay your agent, with the same outcome.

And shop around. You can absolutely find a buyer's agent willing to help you purchase a $1M house for $12,500. I'd bet you could also find one for $10K, or even for $5K. As you move in the direction of "no frills" expect to see fewer houses with your agent and to have somewhat less hand holding, but you can still get good advice on what matters, i.e., how much and what terms to offer, since this is not time intensive.

[Anonymous]

Can someone explain the new rules? Bc my understanding was that 1) agents can’t show a home without some form of agreement signed outlining who pays compensation (even if it’s short time); and 2) sellers don’t have to pay buyer agent compensation; buyers can ask for them to pay it in their offer, but it’s not automatically assumed sellers pay both.

So if you are unrepresented and call the listing agent don’t they then ask you to sign an agreement and are thus a double agent? EILIF

[Anonymous]

The listing agent may ask you to sign a buyer agreement but don’t ever agree to that. Just politely say no and ask to see the home as a potential unrepresented purchaser. That has been and still is part of the listing agents job.

If you do use a buyer agent (and sign the required buyer agreement,) you would have to pay whatever compensation agreed to whether the seller agrees to make that part of the offer/sales contract or not.

Dual agency is legal in Virginia but both seller and buyer have to agree. Is usually only in the interest of the listing agent to do dual agency - don’t do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can someone explain the new rules? Bc my understanding was that 1) agents can’t show a home without some form of agreement signed outlining who pays compensation (even if it’s short time); and 2) sellers don’t have to pay buyer agent compensation; buyers can ask for them to pay it in their offer, but it’s not automatically assumed sellers pay both.

So if you are unrepresented and call the listing agent don’t they then ask you to sign an agreement and are thus a double agent? EILIF

They may have you sign a disclosure of brokerage relationship form before showing - that doesn’t create an agency relationship. The purpose is to notify you that the agent represents the seller only (and that everything you do or say will be used against you by the agent and seller.)

The form is actually required in most cases when the listing agent shows the home to unrepresented buyers. Most agents don’t have you sign it, but they are supposed to email/give it to you when you meet.

[Anonymous]

Not using an agent will be fine for some people on the sell or buy side, depending on what is going on with the market. A lot of people will end up making bad decisions because they think they know more than they know.

Some agents are very good and worth the money. A lot of agents, probably the majority, are worthless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:do you have any idea how stupid your post is? You start out ranting about how anybody with half a brain can do it by themselves. So… do it by yourself.

in fact, I clicked on this post because I really liked the title and I was really interested to see how smart people here actually can think of ways to leverage these new rules to benefit the buyer, because I certainly have not found any. But it’s just two pages of trolling right now.

^found the sad realtor who’s fees just got cut lol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Real estate agents are a joke of a job. Been fooling people for years. The joke is over now they will have to go out and get a real job now……

When will this become reality? When will realtors really stop being a thing? How do regular people see the houses that haven’t hit the market yet? I think anyone who has purchased a house since realtors were invented should be compensated for that racket.

Isn’t part of the settlement against the whole MLS process in general and like “pocket listings” and all this sht? Ugh. Such sketchy crap.

[Anonymous]

as an agent i just got such a buyer and it was great! buyer grossly overpaid and seller cut me additional commission. Buyer had no clue.