One of the three listing proposals wants to keep the family house off market

Ask C for the names of the two off-market sales and whether they were on one side or both. If they were the buyer's agent on someone else's discreet sale, that's a different claim than having sourced a buyer themselves.

On buyer-side compensation in an off-market deal, mechanically nothing special happens. The buyer's agent has a written agreement with their buyer saying what they get paid, and then either the buyer pays it, or your side agrees to pay it as a negotiated term of the contract, or some split. Off market just means the number isn't advertised anywhere in advance. It still lands in the purchase agreement. The practical effect at your price point is you'll be negotiating it deal by deal against whoever shows up, which can go either way for you.

120 days on market at that price band sounds long to me but four sales in eighteen months means it isn't. That's roughly a sale every four and a half months in the whole band. C's staleness argument is doing a lot of work on a market where nothing sells fast anyway.

plumb beat me to it. If everything at that price sits, buyers in that band know everything sits, and nobody's reading 100 days on market as a red flag.

Just under two acres in a small market, is there any split potential or does the lot zoning matter to the value? I've seen high-end rural-edge houses where a chunk of the price was really the land and the agents priced it purely off the house comps. Worth asking all three what they did with the acreage, because if one of them can articulate it and the other two can't, that's a signal about who actually knows the band.

The spread between A and C is $450k on price and about 0.5% on fee. On $3.05M the extra fee is roughly $15k. So C only needs to beat A's realized price by $15k to justify the fee, which is nothing. The whole question is whether the $3.05M is real or whether it's the number that wins listing appointments. Ask C what their last six listings listed at and closed at.

sable's last line is the whole thread. List-to-close ratio on their last six, and days on market for each. If they won't hand it over, they've told you.

I'd also make C's fee conditional. 2.5% if it sells during the off-market window at or above a stated number, 3% only if they bring the higher price. Whether that structure is permissible in your state and with their brokerage is a question for them and their broker, but agents at that level do negotiate structure.

One thing nobody's raised is the buyer's financing. At $3M in a thin market you're probably looking at a jumbo or a portfolio loan, and appraisals get interesting when there are four comps and two of them aren't public. A discreet sale with no market exposure gives an appraiser even less to work with. Ask each agent how they'd handle an appraisal that comes in short, because that's where the $3.05M gets tested.

I'd take A and not lose sleep, mostly for warrant's reason. Full exposure is the defensible choice for an executor and the fee difference is small in dollars. But tender's appraisal point applies to A too, so ask that question regardless of who you hire.