What does it cost me if she represents both of us?

Question

First house, so bear with me. The agent who's been driving me around also listed a place I like, and she gave me a form saying she'd represent both of us and I had to sign to keep going. I read somewhere that when this happens the commission gets cut because one agent is doing both jobs, so the seller saves money and some of that shows up in the price.

But nobody has offered me any discount. Nothing on the form mentions a lower total commission. So either the thing I read was wrong or she just hasn't brought it up.

Also, does dual agency cost me anything directly? Like a fee I pay? I don't fully get who pays what here and the form is two pages of consent language with no numbers on it at all.

megan_doyle15 · Answer

You don't pay a fee for it. The consent form is just permission, it has no price attached, which is exactly why it confused me too.

omar_haddad · Answer

The discount thing is real but it's not automatic and it's not yours. Commission is a term of the listing agreement between the seller and the brokerage, signed before you existed. If that agreement says 5% total whether or not there's a cooperating broker, the firm keeps 5% and there is no saving to pass anywhere. Some listing agreements do have a reduced rate for the in-house case, maybe 4% instead of 5%. Even then the money belongs to the seller, not to you. You'd have to negotiate for it in the price like anything else, and your agent is the person who'd have to argue both sides of that.

samantha_ruiz · Answer

What you actually lose is advice, and it's worth naming because it doesn't show up as a line item. Once she's dual, she generally can't tell you the seller took a lower offer and it fell through, can't tell you the list price is high for the block, can't help you build a strategy for what to bid. She becomes a person who moves paper between two clients. On a 400k house, a bid you would have shaded 8k lower with real coaching is an 8k cost that never appears anywhere.

What those consent forms are permitted to say and when they have to be signed varies by state, and a few states don't allow the arrangement at all. Worth an hour with a local real estate attorney before you sign anything you don't understand.

jordan_ellis2 · Answer

Ask her one question in writing: what is the total commission on this listing, and does it change if you write the buyer side too. Six months of reading and that's the question I'd lead with, because the answer is a number and the form isn't.

The other thing keystone is circling. You can decline. Declining doesn't mean you lose the house, it means you bring your own buyer's agent and she goes back to being purely the seller's agent. She may tell you the seller won't pay a cooperating broker, and post-settlement that's a live negotiation rather than a fixed rule, so you'd be paying your agent out of pocket or asking the seller to cover it in the offer. That has a real cost, maybe 2.5% of price, and it might genuinely be worth it. Or it might not be on a straightforward deal. I don't think there's a clean answer and I'd rather you go in knowing that than think signing is free.

What does it cost me if she represents both of us?

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