quote:
The buyer agent is paid off the proceeds of the home, which directly impacts what a seller is willing to accept as an offer. If the seller will not accept anything less than $335k net to them, for example, then the buyer will have to offer enough over that to cover the agent commissions.

Adding another middleman, even if it’s worth it, increases the costs for both the buyer and the seller. Plain and simple.

Not so much disagreeing, but here is where many residential sellers and buyers get confused. If someone is utilizing a true buyer’s broker or agent, that will typically be a contractual agreement that has no relation to the contractual agreement that a listing agent has with a seller. So certainly, that is going to be an agreed upon fee/cost to the buyer.

But in a sub agency situation, the selling broker or agent is just going to get some stated percentage of the listing broker’s commission. Whether the listing agent is also the selling agent or a sub agent is the selling agent, the overall commission typically does not change. Certainly there can be negotiations to adjust the commissions to “make the deal”, but what’s in the listing agreement dictates the commission(s) to be paid. So typically, whether one uses a different agent than the listing agent to write the contract, or uses the listing agent, the overall commission won’t change (apart from a negotiated reduction after the fact).

The confusion I mentioned is usually when a buyer believes that the agent who writes their offer is their agent. Although practices vary from state to state, typically any agent who is agreeing to take his commission as part of a sub agency still has a fiduciary responsibility to the seller… not the buyer. In my state at least, the only responsibility that the sub agent has to a buyer is “fair treatment”, but not a fiduciary duty, while a true (contracted) buyer’s broker has a fiduciary responsibility to the buyer.