What actually tests an investor-focused buyer's agent before signing anything

The walk-away question, easily. A buyer planning one purchase on a slow timeline has an incentive that points a different direction from the agent's from day one. An agent who can describe a client they lost a commission on because the septic came back bad has shown you something a spreadsheet cannot.

Can I ask a basic one. When you say "tell me what you'd offer," what is the agent supposed to be solving for? Is there a standard formula, or is the point that they explain whatever formula they use? I've read the 70% rule twice and I still can't tell if it's a real thing or a slogan.

Juniper, it is a rough shorthand for flips, and how much of a slogan it is depends on your market and your rehab cost. Ignore it for rentals. Sextant, a cruder test works too. Tell the agent to write an offer 22% under ask and watch what happens in the next ten minutes. Half of them start explaining why the seller will not take it. The one worth keeping says fine, do you want an inspection period on it, and has it submitted before lunch. Her math matters less than her willingness to stop being the friction.

Two references from clients who bought more than once with them. Repeat buyers are the whole signal, and it takes one phone call.

In a rural county where the typical house is $70k, there are often four agents who will answer a call about it, and one of them is also the auctioneer. Interviewing implies a pool. In that market you take the person who picks up, run every number yourself, and the fee conversation is short because nobody has a script for it. Sextant's test is sound. It just presumes a market with choices in it.

Hollow, there is a version of that problem from the other direction. An investor who has not settled on a strategy yet does not know what to test for. The agent who is right for a BRRRR investor and the agent who is right for someone buying a stabilized duplex do not look alike. So the first interview question, before any listing test, should be the strategy itself, stated plainly, to see whether the agent pushes back on it or simply agrees.

Rehab numbers, and I'll be blunt about why. Every agent estimate I've ever been handed came in low, usually by 30% to 40%, because they price cosmetic work and forget that opening a wall is a decision, not a cost line. So I ask for a past client's estimate next to what that client actually spent. If they've never followed up to find out, they don't know what their own numbers are worth.

For small multifamily, two building questions do most of the work. Ask which of the units are separately metered and where the boiler is, then listen. An agent who has walked mechanical rooms in this stock answers immediately, and an agent who has not will read the listing back. That reveals more than an offer price would, because the offer price on a 4-unit is mostly a function of the expense line that gets argued over anyway.

Nobody has mentioned the financing side. Ask them how many of their buy-side closings last year used a DSCR loan versus conventional, and what the appraisal came back at relative to contract on the last one. An agent who has never sat through a rental-underwritten loan will blow your timeline, and the terms and appraisal treatment shift often enough that you should get the current version in writing from the lender rather than the agent. It is still a fair test of whether they have been in the room.

Worth asking whether any of this applies to note deals, because it mostly does not. Agents rarely show up there at all. The job described in this thread is property access, and a note buyer is buying paper, so the test does not translate to that side.

The live listing test gets the vote here, with the caveat that it is the test an investor would most enjoy administering, which is a reason to be suspicious of it. Sextant is right that the numbers get redone regardless. What actually costs investors deals is being slow, and no amount of agent underwriting fixes that. Quarry's ten minute test is probably measuring the thing that matters more.

My test would be about the paper. Show me the buyer-broker agreement you're going to ask me to sign, before we talk about houses. Term length, what triggers the fee, how it works if the seller side offers nothing. If they can explain their own agreement without going to get their broker, they've thought about their business, and if they get defensive I've saved myself a month.

Five deals in, what turned out to matter was none of the above. It was her plumber and her property manager. The underwriting I do, the access was medium at best, but she handed me people who show up and that changed my hold costs more than any offer price she suggested. So maybe the test is ask who you'd call for me at 7pm on a Sunday, and see if a name comes out fast.

Harrow's answer is the one I'd trust, coming from the tool side of this. I've walked houses where the agent's number for a kitchen was less than the cabinets. If I were interviewing one I'd ask them to price a specific thing I already know the cost of, panel upgrade or a sewer line, and see how far off they land. Being off is fine. Not knowing they're off is the problem.