Did losing negotiating leverage in a dual agency deal actually cost me the deal

Pulling consent after inspection found real money is exactly what I'd do next time.

The relist at $8k below your contract price is the tell. A $12k ask on $18k of documented defects is not aggressive, on a fourplex in ABQ that is basically rounding error relative to what a new roof runs right now. Flat rate roofers in that market were quoting me $14k to $19k last fall just for a standard tear-off on a similar footprint.

Your own rep locked in before inspection, not before offer. That is the moment dual agency actually bites.

That one-hour turnaround is the tell for me. I had something similar on a duplex in Mesa, 2021, asked for a $9k credit on electrical panel work and got a "seller said no" back in maybe forty minutes. No counter, no explanation, just no. I later found out through the other side's escrow company that the seller had actually floated $6k internally and the agent never brought it back to me. Cost me the deal and I spent probably sixty hours over two months finding a comparable property at worse terms. The thing dual agency does structurally is remove the back-channel conversation where a buyer's agent would normally say "look, what does your seller actually need to feel okay about this" and instead you get a courier who has a financial reason to close fast. I'm not saying your agent was corrupt, but the incentive to split both sides of a 3% commission on a fourplex in ABQ is strong enough that "easier" and "faster" starts looking a lot like a fiduciary failure. Revoking consent at inspection is messy and agents push back on it, but your math on this one is pretty clean in hindsight.

The thing that would bother me is not the no, it's that you only asked for $12k on an $18k inspection report. In Kansas City I would have opened at the full $18k and expected to land somewhere around $14-15k, especially on a fourplex where deferred maintenance hits cash flow immediately. You may have already discounted yourself before the agent even picked up the phone.

New Mexico is a disclosed dual agency state but the agent's fiduciary duty basically collapses into a neutral facilitation role the second both parties sign that consent, and "neutral" in practice almost always means whoever is easier to manage. You were the buyer asking for a concession. Seller was sitting still. You were the problem in that equation from the agent's perspective, and an hour turnaround on a $12k ask over documented deferred maintenance on a fourplex in a market like Albuquerque where investors aren't exactly fighting each other in bidding wars right now tells me the agent picked up the phone, heard "no," and called it a day.

The relist math is what I'd be pulling apart. If the property went pending at or near $8k below your contract price, the new buyer's agent probably opened with something in the low-to-mid teens off ask and landed somewhere that worked. That's exactly the negotiation you needed someone running hard for you, and you didn't have it. I've had this happen once in Bernalillo County on a small multifamily and what I do now is I keep my own agent in every deal through at least inspection, and if the listing agent makes noise about streamlining the process by going dual I just say I'll pass on that. The commission split math benefits them either way on a dual agency deal so they're not doing you a favor by suggesting it, they're doing themselves one.

The relist tells you the seller had room and your agent knew it.