Found a House Without a Realtor, What's Next?

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It seems like I’ve done all of the work, and now I’ve found a house without my Realtor, what’s next?

If you’ve every asked this question, you’re not alone. Whether a buyer can change agents, or choose to be represented at a later time is an often misunderstood topic.

If a Realtor Shows Me a House Do I Have to Use Them?
No. Just because a real estate agent has shown you a home does not mean that you have to use them. You don’t have to work with them in general, or on that specific listing, even if they are the listing agent (i.e. seller’s agent).

In New York as in most other states, the Department of State has come out with strong opinions regarding the splitting of commissions between agents in general, and the right of buyers to work with the agent of their choice more specifically:

“In prior opinions, the Department of State has stated that a listing’s broker must always honor the buyer’s right to be represented by his or her own broker, and that the listing broker cannot refuse to work with a buyer’s broker. The listing broker is not, however, obligated to share the sales commission with the buyer’s broker unless, prior to the sale, the two brokers have agreed to do so.”

The story is different if you have signed an exclusivity agreement of some type with a buyer’s agent, in which case you may owe commission regardless of what you choose to do.

Buyers typically never sign any sort of exclusivity agreements in New York City because of the ease of seeing listings and the enormous amount of competition between agents (i.e. there are 50,000 licensed real estate agents in the NYC metro area alone).
However, norms in other locales like Westchester County, NY can be different.
Because a Realtor conceivably will have to do more work driving a buyer around in a suburban or rural environment, buyers in these areas may be required to sign an Exclusive Right to Represent Buyer Agreement by their buyer’s agent.

You can of course decline to sign such an agreement, but that may cause Realtors to neglect you or outright refuse to work with you as your buyer’s agent.

Getting a Buyer's Agent After You've Seen a Listing

As a buyer, you are not obligated to choose whether you want a buyer’s agent before you view a property for the first time.

As the Department of State has clearly indicated in its opinion letters, the listing agent must respect the buyer’s right to choose to work with the agent of his or her choice.

In practice, this means a buyer who is typically early in his or her search will often attend open houses on their own. Think about it, the buyer at this stage may not even know whether it really makes sense to buy vs rent, and is merely exploring what’s out there. Or perhaps the buyer is further along and just wants to scope out different neighborhoods to get a sense of where they actually want to live.

As you can imagine, they may not want to loop in a buyer’s agent at this point, for fear of wasting a buyer agent’s time because they don’t know how serious they are yet.

In plain English, this means that buyers shop around on their own, and then choose to have representation later on when they are more serious. This happens all the time.

Fortunately, these types of battles are quite rare between real estate professionals in NYC where 90% of deals are done between two agents, a buyer’s agent and a seller’s agent. Nationwide, the average is not far off at 75% of all transactions being done between two agents.
Real estate professionals generally understand and are aware of the state statues around buyer’s rights to choose their own agent, and as a result fights about representation are quite rare between traditional real estate agents.

The situation can be less collegial however, if the buyer is represented by a discount broker who’s stated objective is to “disrupt” the industry. We’ve heard too many stories from customers who had previously worked with mom and pop discount brokers who have learned the hard way. Typically, the listing agents would simply ignore the discount broker’s inquiries or even offers, much to the detriment of the buyer.

Fortunately, buyers can save money buy getting a Hauseit Buyer Closing Credit from one of our traditional, established partner brokers who are not discount brokers. Because of their discretion in giving you a rebate of the buyer agent commission, you won’t suffer from the negative consequences of boycotting by traditional brokers that your typical, small discounter broker might experience.

Do I Save Money by Working Directly with the Listing Agent?
No, buyers typically do not save any money by working directly with a listing agent.

Hauseit LLC, Licensed Real Estate Broker
Tel: (888) 494-8258 | https://www.hauseit.com
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