What got me hired as an investor's buyer agent was a rehab number

Second house is the interesting one. Seller offered zero to the buy side, you raised price 5k to fund a 5,500 credit, and the appraisal happened to support it. If the appraisal comes in 4k light, what happens? Your client either brings more cash or you renegotiate, and either way he's now associating your fee with a problem. Did you have a plan for that or did it just work?

I'm at zero here so forgive the basic one. How long between deciding to get licensed and the first closing check? Trying to figure out whether this is a six month thing or a two year thing before there's any income.

Can someone say plainly what a written buyer agreement is? I've read the term four times in this thread and I think it's a contract between the buyer and the agent about the agent's fee, but I want to be sure. And is signing one now standard everywhere, or does it vary by state?

@juniper it's a contract that says the agent represents you as a buyer and spells out what they get paid, how long it runs, and which properties it covers. Since the NAR settlement changes took effect in August 2024, an agent generally has to have one signed before touring, and the seller no longer automatically publishes a buyer-side commission through the MLS. The exact forms and some of the rules vary by state and brokerage, so read the one in front of you.

solder, how did the flipper find you in the first place? That's the part I can't picture.

Three clauses I'd want read out loud before anybody copies this. One, the term and what happens to properties you introduced if the agreement expires. Two, whether the agreement covers auction, foreclosure sale, and off-market purchases or only MLS listings, because an investor buys from all of those. Three, whether the compensation is a floor or a ceiling when the listing does offer something above your number.

solder, your 5,500 minimum is doing real work on a 178k house. On a 400k house 2.5 percent is 10k and your client may not see the same value in a forty minute walkthrough. Form language and what's enforceable differ by state, so that's a conversation with your broker and a real attorney, not with me.

58k estimate against 61k actual is the number in this post that would make me hire you.

The walkthrough sheet is the asset. Is it a form you fill in the same way every time, or is it freehand? I ask because the moment you take a second client you either have to be in two places on Saturday or the sheet has to be something a trained person can produce. That's the choke point in every service business I've looked at.

Honest question and not a dig. What stops that flipper from paying a contractor 300 bucks to walk the house and then buying through a discount broker? You'd still get paid on the two you did, but the service you described is separable from the license.

@plumb it's separable right up until the flipper wants an offer written at 9pm on a Sunday. Speed is half of what an investor is paying for.

solder, when he keeps one as a rental instead of flipping it, do you have a rent number to hand him? I get calls from buyers who got a great purchase price and then discovered the unit rents 200 under what they assumed. Bring rent comps you actually verified and you've got a second reason he can't replace you.

Five years in and I'll say something that stings. One client doing four to six a year is not a business, it's a job with one boss who can fire you by phone. Two closings is real money and you should be proud of it, and you should also be having coffee with two more flippers this month. The year my biggest client took a break I lost 60 percent of my revenue in one quarter and it took eighteen months to rebuild.

Give me hours. Walkthroughs, offers written, deals that died, showings, the closing coordination. My guess is you're at 40 to 60 hours across those two deals including the dead ones, and gross commission is roughly 4,450 plus 5,500, call it 9,950 before your broker's cut. That's a fine hourly for a first year. It stops being fine if the dead deal count triples and the fee stays flat.

Also, what's your split with your brokerage and is there a transaction fee on top?

That was going to be my question too. I'm three weeks from my exam and every brokerage I've talked to wants 70/30 in year one plus a few hundred per transaction, which on a 5,500 minimum leaves something like 3,600. Does the investor niche get you to a better split faster because the deal count is predictable?

Going back over your post, the seller credit on house two is the piece I'd underweighted. You raised the price 5k to fund a 5,500 credit, so your client effectively financed most of your fee and paid 500 in cash. That only works when the appraisal holds and when the lender allows a credit that size for that loan type, and both of those need confirming in writing with the lender before you write the offer. Not a criticism, just the mechanic I hadn't understood.

Answering my own question with what solder told me offline plus what's in the post. Two closings, roughly 9,950 gross, and after a first year split and transaction fees he's somewhere near 6,500 net. That's the honest picture and it's a normal first year.

What's repeatable here is narrow and worth naming. He sells a rehab number, delivered on site, inside an hour, and it came in 3k under actual on the one house we can check. That is a thing a flipper cannot get from a search alert, and it's why a buyer with a business mindset will sign an agreement and pay a fee even when the listing side offers nothing. Investors treat the fee as a cost of acquisition. Consumer buyers treat it as money out of their own pocket, which is why general buyer agency is having a harder time since the compensation rules changed.

What isn't repeatable yet is everything @thatch and @lantern raised. One client, one estimator, one Saturday. Fix the client count first, because concentration will hurt you before capacity does.

And @warrant is right that the fee mechanics need to be sound before you rely on the seller-credit route again. Appraisal risk and lender credit limits are not things you want to discover mid-contract, and the forms and rules differ by state. Confirm with your broker and the lender in writing each time.