What am I signing away with an "exclusive right to sell"?

Your supply yard contact has it roughly right. An exclusive right to sell listing means the listing agent earns the agreed commission on a sale during the term no matter who produces the buyer, including you. The alternative you may see named is an exclusive agency listing, where the agent is still the only agent, but you owe nothing if you find the buyer yourself with no agent involved. Exclusive right to sell is the common form in residential work, because an agent spending money on photography and marketing doesn't want the seller closing around him at the last minute.

What sellers negotiate instead of the form itself is usually two things. One is the term, and 3 months with a renewal is as normal as 6. The other is a carve-out, sometimes called an exclusion or reserved buyer clause, naming specific people you were already talking to before the agreement, so if one of them buys, no commission is owed. If your neighbor is a real prospect today, name him in writing before you sign.

On the blank line, the MLS can't display an offer of compensation to a buyer's agent, and the offer itself is still legal. It gets communicated other ways, and the current rules require your agent to disclose any such offer to you and get your written approval before making it. That's why it lives on the paper rather than in the listing feed. Read the protection period clause too, which is the tail after expiration where a buyer the agent introduced still triggers a commission if they come back and close. Form language varies by state, so ask which version yours uses.

I didn't know a carve-out was a thing you could just ask for. Everything is new to me here and I assumed the paper was the paper.

The protection period is the part I'd read twice, girder. I looked at a form where it was 180 days after expiration, which means if you fire the agent and relist with someone else, and the buyer turns out to be someone the first agent showed it to, you can end up in an argument about two commissions on one sale. Some brokerages cut that to 60 or 90 days if you ask. The registered-prospect list has to be delivered to you in writing or the clause is a lot harder to enforce, at least in the forms I've seen.

Six months on a spec build isn't crazy though. Photos, floor plan, drone, the agent is spending real money up front and probably doesn't recover it in 30 days on a house that needs a specific buyer.

I'm coming at this from zero and the thing that confused me for weeks was that "exclusive" sounds like it's about other agents when a lot of it is about you. Exclusive agency vs exclusive right to sell is one word of difference and it decides whether your neighbor buying costs you 2.5 percent or nothing. I had those two backwards until I read them side by side.

@tally the two-commission scenario is what keeps me from signing anything long. Though I notice I've been reading listing forms for months instead of building anything to list, which is its own problem.

Dumb question I'd have swallowed in a live room: if the commission percentage in the agreement is only the listing side, where does the buyer-agent number actually get written down? Is it a second document, or an amendment, or does your agent just tell buyer agents when they call? I can't picture the physical piece of paper.

@compass in my area it's an addendum to the listing agreement, one page, seller initials the amount. Then the number gets communicated to buyer agents on request and sometimes on the brokerage's own site. The part I'm chewing on is timing. If you set it at signing and the market softens, you're renegotiating with your own agent to change your own offer, and that conversation is worse than it sounds because he's the one who has to go tell everyone who's already been through the house.