One agent across everything, or a different one in each market?

The exclusivity question seems like the first thing to answer. If the agreement names a specific county you're probably fine signing another one elsewhere. If it says something like "the metropolitan area" you have a problem you can't solve by being polite about it.

I'd ask her first. Some agents will refer you out to someone in that market and take a referral cut, which costs you nothing extra and keeps the relationship intact. Feels less like firing her.

Referral is usually 25% of the receiving agent's side, paid broker to broker. Doesn't come out of your pocket.

Two agents in two markets is normal. The thing that goes wrong is not the awkwardness, it's that neither one puts you at the top of their list because they can both tell you're splitting. Response times slip.

Knowing the appraisers is a strange thing to want from an agent and also the exact thing I'd want. In the county north of me the appraisers routinely won't give value for a finished basement, and an agent who's watched that happen fifty times will tell you before you write the offer instead of after the report lands. That's local knowledge you can't get from a data pull.

Can you actually sign two exclusive buyer agreements at the same time? I assumed exclusive meant exclusive, full stop.

@compass exclusive normally means exclusive within the scope the document defines, and the scope is usually a named area or even a named list of properties. It's the geographic definition that does the work. Read the first paragraph of yours, it's normally right there.

I've been reading this thread trying to work out whether the split is even the right frame. If she's lost twenty minutes north, is that a geography problem or is it that she's a residential agent and you've moved into a different kind of buying? Because the second one won't be fixed by finding a second person with the same skill set in a different zip code. Not sure which it is from your post.