Read three consent forms side by side, and the difference is what the agent stops doing

The Form A carve-out is what stops me every time. If the agent can't advise on price and can't tell you what the other side would take, what is left of the fiduciary duty that the same document says survives? I've read that sentence maybe eight times and I still can't build a picture of what the agent is actively doing for me other than calendar management.

I sign A more often than I'd admit in a room of people. On a thin-margin flip the difference between an offer in six hours and an offer in three days is the whole deal. The listing agent already has the seller on the phone. I price the lack of advocacy in by going in at my walk-away number and not moving, which removes the thing she isn't allowed to help me with anyway.

flint, that works if your walk-away number is genuinely firm. Mine never is once inspection comes back. Where I've been burned is the fee concession. Two deals where the listing agent said the seller's total commission drops when she brings the buyer, and both times the number never appeared anywhere in writing and the price didn't move. warrant, I'd add a fourth form to your stack: the seller's listing agreement, which is where that concession lives or doesn't.

Live version of your Form B right now. Twelve unit deal, two agents in the same office, and the addendum names the managing broker as dual agent with file access to both sides. I asked what stops him from mentioning my ceiling to the seller's agent over lunch. Answer was that he's bound by the same confidentiality, which is true and also just a promise. I'm still in it because the property works, and I did stop telling my agent my true maximum.

Can someone define designated agency for me plainly? I thought it just meant two agents, and I didn't know a broker sat above both of them.

rigging, designated agency means the brokerage assigns one agent to the buyer and a different one to the seller, and each of those agents owes full duties to their own client instead of the split-loyalty version. The brokerage itself is still on both sides of the deal and still collecting from both. Whether it's permitted, and what the supervising broker's status is, is set by state law and varies a lot, so it's a state commission question rather than a general one. Six months of reading and that's the one piece I'm confident on.

Can I just refuse and ask them to send me to an agent at a different firm? Or does raising it make me the difficult buyer who doesn't get the callback.

compass, I've asked twice and both times the answer was yes without drama. It costs you nothing to ask. I hold long and buy slowly, so a week of friction is irrelevant to me, which makes it an easy position to take. flint's calculus is different and I don't think he's wrong for his timeline.

From the vendor seat I see the aftermath of these. When one firm has both sides, the inspection and repair coordination tends to funnel to whoever that firm already uses, and my quotes get compared against a contractor the brokerage likes. Nothing improper, it just narrows the field. Buyers rarely notice because they never see the list they weren't shown.

Trying to get the arithmetic of the concession straight, since I'm still costing out a first deal. If the total fee drops one point on a $400k purchase, that's $4,000 sitting on the seller's side of the table. Nothing makes it mine. So unless the price comes down, I've traded advocacy for a discount the other guy pockets.

tally has it. I've tried to measure this and the measurement is the problem. Buy-side fee savings are visible to the dollar. The price you would have gotten with a real advocate is unobservable. So the comparison is a known small number against an unknown one, and people default to the known number because it's the only one on the page. On the four purchases where I ran comps afterward, the two with a single firm on both sides closed at 1.2 and 1.8 percent above my post-hoc comp mid. Sample of two, so treat it as an anecdote.

Land makes this worse in a way the forms don't contemplate. In the county I've been watching, one brokerage lists most of the acreage that trades. There's no separate buyer's agent to go get. So the choice isn't between forms, it's between Form A and not seeing the parcel until it's under contract with someone else. I've mostly resolved that by hiring an appraiser before I write, which costs me a few hundred and gives me the price opinion the dual agent isn't allowed to give.

I've signed conflict waivers with my attorney the same way for the five years I've run a service business. Difference is the attorney's waiver spells out what happens if the conflict becomes actual, including that he withdraws from both matters. None of warrant's three forms seem to say what happens when the conflict actually bites. Is there a withdrawal clause anywhere in them?

Still mostly confused on notes, but the seller-financed version of this bothers me. If the seller carries paper, the negotiation isn't just price, it's rate, term, and what happens on default. Who drafts that when one firm has both sides and can't advise either party on terms?

vellum, in the material I'm studying that gets pushed to an attorney, and honestly it should. The course language and the practice language don't match well. The exam prep treats dual agency as a clean disclosure-and-consent process, and every practicing agent I've talked to describes it as awkward. The state I'm licensing in requires written consent before any confidential information is shared, and my instructor was clear that the timing requirement differs state to state, so I've stopped generalizing.

Timing is my question too. On my first rental purchase the consent form came with the offer packet, after I'd already told the agent my budget and how fast I needed to close. Does that ordering matter, or is the form just papering something that already happened?

Different pressure on my side. When I bring outside money into a deal, the investors ask who represented us, and answering that one brokerage had both sides invites a conversation I'd rather not have. Even where it's legal and even where the deal is fine, it looks like a fee leak to anyone reading the closing statement afterward. That reputational cost is real and it doesn't show up in ledger's comp math.

Six units, listing agent on both sides, my choice. I went in with a written price and told her I wouldn't move, and she didn't push me. Closed about where I expected. What I learned is that the arrangement was fine because I had already done the work she wasn't allowed to do for me. If I'd walked in wanting guidance, I'd have gotten paperwork and a smile. Every unit teaches something and that one taught me to bring my own number.

Reading warrant's Form B twice more. So the confidentiality wall is between two agents who report to the same person who can see both files. Is the wall then just an agreement that the broker won't say anything, or is there something structural stopping him?

juniper, it's an agreement, enforced by license risk and whatever supervision the firm actually runs. Some larger firms restrict file access by transaction in the software, which is a real control, and plenty of small offices have one person who sees everything. warrant, the withdrawal question thatch raised is the one I'd chase. My underwriting doesn't change based on who represents me, so I treat all three forms the same way: independent price opinion, my own inspector, and my exit number set before I tour. That makes the representation question smaller than the thread makes it feel. It doesn't make it zero, because deadline and disclosure handling still sits with someone who's paid by both sides.

I want income without a second job, so I'll say the unpopular thing. Form C is the one I understand. Nobody claims to be on my side, and I go hire the price opinion myself. The other two ask me to trust a duty that the same page then carves up.