A house that I’m looking at is listed by someone associated with one of the big franchises. The realtor that I’d like to use is also a franchisee. Assuming that they do not work out of the same office, could there be a conflict of interest? What if they do?
Not knowing the rules and regs of your state, I can say there almost certainly wouldn’t be a conflict of interest involved here. Agents from different offices rarely share files or information with one another. It wouldn’t even be a conflict of interest within the same office, though it gets a bit trickier in those situations.
Trustworthy agents, however, should take it upon themselves to distance themselves as much as possible from one another so that nothing in the transaction seems improper.
[Content deleted: I read the OP wrong]
Thanks
We bought a house about six months ago and went with a Buyer’s Agent. While a regular agent should represent you and only you, when they’re regularly on both the selling and buying side, they have some incentive not to play too tough with each other. A buyer’s agent a much greater incentive to get you the best deal, since they need word of mouth from happy buyers.
That’s what I did when I bought my first house, and I agree that my interests were represented well. I believe so even more strongly now that I worked for one of the big real estate companies for a while, and I know more about the industry than I did back then. (I wasn’t a Realtor, but I got to witness all the inside stuff that goes on, and it wasn’t pretty. No offense intended to any scrupulous real estate people.)
I have a realtor question, too: why can’t anyone seem to pronounce it properly? Even really articulate people seem to slip into “relator” ARGH!
When I was looking for a house last year I went with a buyer’s agent, too. As it turned out, the townhouse I ended up buying was represented by another agent at the same realty office. As far as I could tell there was no impropriety involved; in fact, it wasn’t until I was ready to make an offer that he mentioned that the seller was so motivated (the place had been on the market for a while and the asking price had already been reduced twice) that they had just offered a $5000 rebate to any buyer.
In my state of New Jersey, realtors have to co-broke, meaning everyone gets an equal right to show and sell any listing. I think that’s pretty much true everywhere.
Check with your local board of realtors.
Just be aware that whether the agent is a buyer’s agent or a seller’s agent, their number one fiscal imperative is to get you to buy a house. The longer you take to buy something, the more time and money you cost them, so it behooves them to get you into a deal as quickly as possible.