Signed a 45-day, one-county agreement and closed inside it at 289k

The question I sat on for a week before asking anyone: if the 45 days runs out and you buy a house he showed you on day 12, does he still get paid? Mine had a tail clause in it and I only found it because I searched the PDF for the word "after". Juniper, did yours have one, and did you shorten it too?

45 days is tight in a slow market. I'd have blown through three of those. Did he ever push back on re-signing or was it a formality?

The structure juniper is describing is what the August 17, 2024 NAR settlement rules produced. Offers of buyer-agent compensation can no longer be published on the MLS, and a written representation agreement has to be signed before a buyer tours a home. Compensation is formally a negotiation between the buyer and the buyer's agent now. The seller can still pay it, and in most markets still does, which is why the numbers have moved less than the headlines suggested. Redfin's analysis put average buyer-agent commissions near 2.4 percent in early 2025, roughly where they were before the rules changed. A Federal Reserve note found commissions may have come down some while staying at relatively high levels, partly because listing agents found ways to communicate compensation outside the MLS.

Juniper's outcome rests on the seller continuing to cover it. That held here, and it holds in most markets for a plain reason: buyers who have just cleared a down payment and closing costs usually cannot write a second check for the agent, so sellers cover the fee to keep the listing competitive against the one down the street.

On the gap: adding 1,500 to the price to fund a 1,445 fee moves the cost into the loan and into the appraisal question. If the house had appraised at the lower number, that structure gets tested. The clause returning excess compensation as a price reduction is also lender-dependent, since credits and price adjustments are treated differently in underwriting. Both of those get confirmed in writing with the lender before you rely on them. Agreement forms and required disclosures vary by state.

I've been sitting on a 12-month draft for two weeks trying to decide if asking for changes makes me look difficult. Apparently it just makes you look like someone who read it. Taking the county limit idea.

The county limit is the part I'd copy. A year is a long time to be married to someone's search habits, and if you widen the map later you can widen the paper later.

Running juniper's numbers against my own first-deal sheet. 289k, 2.5 percent is 7,225, and if the seller side had held at 2 percent you were short 1,445 in cash on top of everything else. That's the line item nobody put on my spreadsheet when I started. I've since added a row called "agent gap" with 1.5 percent in it just so it exists.

Six months of looking and I've signed exactly one of these, for a single showing, one address, expires that day. Agent didn't blink. compass, on your tail clause question, mine listed the specific address and said it only applied to that property, which felt like the cleanest version I've seen.

Does the short agreement work against you at all? I keep wondering if an agent triages a 45-day client below a 12-month client when a good one comes up.

1,445 on 289,000 is half a percent. It matters to your cash at closing and it does almost nothing to the hold. What would have concerned me is the 1,500 you added to price. If the appraisal comes in at 288 you're covering the gap yourself and the fee is still due. Did you have an appraisal contingency, juniper?

I'm new to all of this, and until this post I had no idea you could edit the form at all. I assumed it was like a lease from a big landlord, take it or leave it.

The excess-compensation line is the one I'd want to see the actual words of. "Returned to buyer as a price reduction subject to lender approval" and "credited to buyer at closing" behave differently, and a lender can cap the second one. kestrel, on triage, the fix is a renewal date, not a long term. Renewals give you a scheduled reason to ask what he did for you.

Saving this. My list is 40 properties across two counties and I'd have signed something statewide without thinking about it.

Sorry for the basic one. Is the 2.5 percent on the purchase price or on something else?

rigging, purchase price. juniper, the thing you did well is the same thing that saves renovation budgets, you defined the scope before anyone started working. 45 days and one county is a scope. A year statewide is not.

I'd read the definition of "procuring cause" in that form if it appears, and whether the county limit is written as the property location or as where you were introduced to the property. I've seen one where the geographic limit applied to the buyer's search area and the tail clause did not, so a house 60 miles outside the box still triggered the fee if the agent had emailed it to you. Two sentences apart, in the same document. Worth knowing which one yours is before you re-sign.