The buyer agent you hire is paid by the seller when you buy.The Buyer Agent (BA) is a real estate agent hired by you to find and buy properties. The BA will help, searching the Multiple Listing System (MLS) and selecting properties according to your asked criteria. The investor’s criteria for a Good Deal are different from what most real estate agents are trained to find and make money at closings. The higher the property price is, the better the commission would be for them. Do you see a conflict of interest here from the investor point of view? I do.
Real estate agents are trained to sell properties to pre-qualified buyers, who want homes in good condition, who pay retail prices and who get their financing from banks. Sometimes it is difficult to convince a particular agent that you really want to see the not so nice houses and make offers 40% under the asked price. An investor pays pennies for the dollar. This is the difference between a home buyer and an investor.
I adjusted my expectations working with real estate agents. I use buyer agents just for their access to MLS. Here is how I worked with my BA:
We visit about three properties in the same day; more than three is confusing. We see a hundred houses, make three offers, get nothing and start over again. At this moment, our buyer agent was giving up. You may hire a different one for showing inside houses or to deal with seller agents for that. End of story. For listings now I use the Internet, so you may do it also at:
Realtor.com
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