Dual Agent

Dual agency occurs when a single agent, or a single brokerage, represents both the buyer and the seller in the same transaction. The arrangement lets the agent potentially collect both sides of the commission, but it places the agent in the structurally awkward position of owing loyalty to two parties whose interests directly oppose each other on price. Dual agency is heavily regulated and, in some states, prohibited outright, precisely because of that conflict.

Dual agency has always been the most scrutinized form of representation, and the regulatory climate has grown less hospitable to it. The same antitrust concerns that produced the NAR settlement, centered on conflicts of interest and the steering of buyers toward higher-commission properties, draw fresh attention to any arrangement where one party profits from both sides of a deal. The settlement's new transparency requirements, mandating written disclosure of exactly how an agent is compensated, make the economics of dual agency far more visible to clients who once never saw them, and that visibility tends to invite questions a dual agent would rather not field.

Where dual agency remains legal, it persists mainly for its efficiency in straightforward transactions and for the larger commission it can yield. But the direction of both law and consumer awareness runs against it.

Dual agency faces a tightening vise of regulatory disfavor and rising transparency. As more states restrict or ban the practice, and as the post-settlement environment trains consumers to scrutinize agent compensation, the arrangement becomes harder to justify and easier to challenge. Some brokerages are moving toward designated agency, assigning different agents within the same firm to each side, to capture the deal while sidestepping the sharpest conflict.

Dual agency runs against the dominant currents of the moment: heightened scrutiny of compensation conflicts, expanding state-level restriction, and a settlement-driven transparency regime that exposes precisely the economics that make the arrangement controversial. While it persists where legal for its efficiency and double commission, the structural pressures are clearly unfavorable. On current evidence, dual agency is projected to decline into 2027, increasingly displaced by designated-agency structures and constrained by a regulatory and consumer environment that views the practice with growing suspicion.