Two investor agents, one of them buys in my price band herself. How do people handle that?

You can't size the deals you never hear about, so stop trying and change what you can observe.

Ask B for a written first-look term: for the twelve months of the agreement, any two to four unit in your zips between your price points gets sent to you within 24 hours of her learning about it, and if she wants it herself she says so in that same message before you've spent time on it. Then you're not relying on her ethics, you have a term you can point at. Agents who are actually straight about this agree fast.

The other thing, and this is the real reason I'd lean B: an agent who owns fourteen doors in your band has seen what breaks in those buildings. A's comps being good is table stakes. B knowing that a particular vintage in a particular pocket has a specific sewer problem is worth more than half a point of commission.

Two purchases in eighteen months makes you small to both. B's retainer at least buys you a claim on her attention.

I'd take A and I don't think it's close.

You said it yourself, B picks first. You'll never know what you lost, which means for the whole eighteen months you'll be wondering, and wondering is expensive when you only make two decisions. I want income and I want to stop thinking about it. Paying half a point more to an agent with no competing interest buys me the thing I actually want, which is not having to audit my agent's motives.

@quarry's first-look clause is clever and I still don't know how you'd ever enforce it. She learns about a building at a bar on Thursday. Prove it.

The retainer is the detail I'd look at again. $1,500 non-refundable if you don't close, and you've told us you might do two purchases in eighteen months and your financing wasn't ready when the first good building showed up. That's a structure where you can pay $1,500 for education. Some states have specific rules about advance fees held by a brokerage, including where the money has to sit, so ask her which account it goes into and get the answer in writing.

On the competitor question, I'd rather buy from a market where my agent is also a buyer, because it means the market supports the numbers. What I'd want disclosed is not her purchases, it's whether she's ever the seller. An agent representing you on a purchase from her own portfolio is a different conversation entirely and the disclosure requirements around it vary by state.