What is a Buyer’s Agent?

Hi, I’m Karl Waizecker, principal broker at Kline May Realty. Thank you for joining us for coffee with Kline May. You know as I mentioned last week, for the next couple of weeks, throughout this month, we’re going to be trying some more affordable local grocery store coffees. And what we’re trying today is eight o’clock coffee. This was one of the more affordable ones I saw on the shelf. And to be honest with you, I remember that that’s what my grandmother made when I was growing up. So I wanted to try it again.

And that’s really good. I gotta say, that’s probably about half the price of the coffees we normally have here. Not quite as robust, not quite as bold, not quite as fresh take tasting, but really, really good.

So our topic today is what’s a buyer’s agent. And I’m actually kind of surprised we haven’t talked about this before, as I was looking through our list of topics. A buyer’s agent is a very basic thing in our business. And that is a real estate agent whose job it is to represent the buyer and the buyer’s best interest exclusively. There should be a buyer’s agency agreement signed, that’s the law in Virginia has been for about 10 years.

So that there is something in writing between the firm and the buyer so that everybody knows who’s representing whom, what we’re looking for how long we’re going to be working together, and how much we’re going to get paid. This is really important. And these things came about. If you go way back to the day, when there wasn’t any buyer’s agency, every real estate agent out there was working for the seller, they had their sign in front of the house, their job was to help that seller and get the top price for that seller. So even though they may be showing buyers through the house, they were really working for the sellers best interest. And that caused a lot of confusion and a lot of bad feelings among buyers who may have thought they were being represented. And then they find out that their agent was really working for the seller’s best interests. So signing a buyer’s agency agreement and hiring a buyer’s agent to represent you. And by the way, typically the buyer agent is paid by the listing agents firm they share the commission that they get hiring that person to help you is really a great move and really necessary and looking out for your best interests as you’re trying to navigate the market. If you’d like to keep up with our market. As always, there’s a link below that you can check on the newest listings, those are listings that have hit within the last two weeks. If you’ve got a question for us you’d like to have answered or a coffee you’d like to have a sample please send it to us at questions at klein made.com. Thanks very much for joining us. We’ll see you again