Comparing dual agency, designated agency and transaction brokerage forms side by side

The Form A carve-out is what stops most careful readers. If the agent can't advise on price and can't disclose what the other side would take, what remains of the fiduciary duty language the same document claims survives? Read closely enough and it's hard to build a clear picture of what the agent is actively doing beyond 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.

Take a twelve unit deal with two agents in the same office, where the addendum names the managing broker as dual agent with file access to both sides. The natural question is what stops him from mentioning a buyer's ceiling to the seller's agent over lunch. The usual answer is that he is bound by the same confidentiality, which is true and also just a promise. Buyers in that position often stay in the deal because the property works, while no longer sharing their true maximum with their own agent.

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, asking twice and getting a yes without drama both times suggests it costs nothing to ask. An investor holding long and buying slowly can treat a week of friction as irrelevant, which makes it an easy position to take. Flint's calculus is different on a shorter timeline, and that isn't wrong for his situation.

A familiar pattern shows up on the vendor side once one firm has both sides. Inspection and repair coordination tends to funnel to whoever that firm already uses, and outside quotes get compared against a contractor the brokerage prefers. 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. This is hard to measure and the measurement itself is the problem. Buy-side fee savings are visible to the dollar. The price a real advocate would have gotten 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. In a small sample studied after closing, purchases where a single firm sat on both sides closed at 1.2 and 1.8 percent above the post-hoc comp midpoint. Two data points, so treat that as an anecdote rather than a pattern.

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.

Conflict waivers with an attorney tend to follow the same shape over years of running a service business. The difference is that a well drafted waiver spells out what happens if the conflict becomes actual, including withdrawal from both matters. If none of the forms being compared say what happens when the conflict actually bites, that is worth asking about directly. Is there a withdrawal clause anywhere in them?

Still working through the notes angle, but the seller-financed version of this is the part worth sitting with. If the seller carries paper, the negotiation is not just price, it is rate, term, and what happens on default. Who drafts that when one firm represents both sides and cannot 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?

There is a different pressure on the capital raising side. Investors ask who represented the buyer, and answering that one brokerage held both sides invites a conversation most sponsors would rather avoid. Even where it is legal and even where the deal itself is clean, it reads as a fee leak to anyone going through the closing statement afterward. That reputational cost is real and it never shows up in ledger's comp math.

A seller who goes in with a written price and holds to it often finds the agent does not push back, and the deal closes about where expected. The arrangement tends to work fine when the client has already done the work the agent is not allowed to do for them under dual or designated agency. A client who walks in wanting guidance instead typically gets paperwork and a smile. The lesson worth carrying into every unit is to bring your 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 is 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 worth chasing. Underwriting that does not move with who holds the representation makes all three forms look much alike in practice. Set the exit number before the first tour, get an independent price opinion, and use an inspector the buyer chose rather than one the office recommends. That makes the representation question smaller than the thread makes it feel. It does not make it zero, because deadline and disclosure handling still sits with someone who is paid by both sides.

The unpopular read is that Form C is the clearest of the three. Nobody claims to be on your side, and you go hire the price opinion yourself. The other two ask a buyer to trust a duty that the same page then carves up.