In my state, before negotiations begin (defined as “writing an offer”), an agency relationship must be established, in writing, between the Buyer and Agent. The Agent’s role may be as a Buyer’s Agent or a Seller’s Agent (or Sub-Agent). The choice is up to the Buyer.
If the Buyer says to me, “I want you to represent me in this negotiation,” I hand him a Buyer Agency Contract to sign and he becomes my Client.
If the Buyer says to me, “I don’t want you to represent me,” or “I don’t care,” I hand him a Customer Disclosure to sign and he becomes my Customer. This is the way it used to be in many states.
I owe both Customers and Clients some basic duties, like being honest, disclosing known defects, providing data and facts as requested, interpreting contractual wording, and keeping confidential items confidential. I owe Clients additional duties, such as giving opinions and assisting them in getting the best price and most favorable terms.
There are some exceptions (what if I already have a Client relationship with the Seller and the Buyer wants me to represent him too?) but this brief outline should suffice as a primer.
In summary, the Agent’s allegiance is not necessarily to the Seller, and it’s the Buyer who makes the choice.
I don’t know what the actual law is, regarding the service that a Home Inspector provides, but I can tell you this:
I by happenstance ended up with the same recommended guy on 2 different house purchases, and he was so incredibly thorough I’d have assumed he felt I might be able to sue him if there were some major problem with the home that he missed.
As a home inspector, I work with many different agents. They all want the best for the BUYER, their client. No way do they want an inspection to be candy coated and put their client in a house that may have issues that the inspector glosses over. They live on word of mouth and a bad inspection lumps them in with the inspector. The buyer always pays for the inspection.
If you trust the Realtor with your largest purchase you’ll ever make, why not trust them to help get you a qualified inspector? Most agents will give a few names of inspectors and you should call each one and go with the one you feel most comfortable with.
The buyer is not always the client, at least in my state. Anyone can hire an inspector. I recommend the seller do it early so any faults are known far enough in advance that an offer or closing is not held up by repair work.
However, I heartily agree with the rest of your post.
I believe this used to be common practice, but changed decades ago so that the buyer may also have an independent realtor. When I bought my house (16 years ago) we used the seller’s realtor, and he was obligated to inform us that he was representing the seller, but could act on our behalf as long as we understood the conflict of interest.
We did, and it wasn’t a big deal. But I can see why, as a buyer, you may want to seek your own realtor to represent your interests.
Just to clarify, an agent is licensed by the state to sell real estate. A Realtor[sup]TM[/sup] is someone who belongs to the National Association of Realtors.
A Realtor gains advantages by belonging to NAR (access to MLS, other data, legal advice), but membership is not a requirement to sell real estate.
As always, this is the case in my state and may be different in yours.
And Leaffan and Labrador Deceiver are right about buyer & seller agency.
Mine just supplied a list. IIRC, I went with someone else entirely as I knew him. Turned out he was also the one the bank hired to do the appraisal. I kind of expected that though as, when he did the home inspection, he told me that particular bank usually hired him to do the appraisals.
It doesn’t matter who you say the realtor works for. They make money if they sell a house. Also, What if 99% of all realtors were guaranteed to provide an honest and thorough home inspector. How would you know if you were in the 1% group or the 99% group? I have bought my share of houses; and I have used the inspectors the realtor recommended. On hindsight I realized two things… 1) I don’t think they knew what they were talking about; and weren’t very thorough. 2) I’m not sure it mattered what they said because by the time it got around to having an inspector look at the house; I was emotionally done with house searching; so I would have probably looked at almost any fault as something that I could live with if the home owner didn’t fix it.
So, I guess what I’m saying is, even more important than the question of a home inspector is to retain the ability to say “No I will not buy this house in this condition.”
It depends upon your trust level for your realtor. Our WI realtor,an expert on farms and woodland properties in western WI, recommended a man who is also the city housing inspector. Talk about conflict of interests, right? But it’s a small world out there and we trusted the experts available. The inspector was very thorough, groaning over and over again about issues not up to code, but also telling us what issues would pass inspection or not. Then the inspector personally called a company to pump out the septic tank … and put that septic pump-out bill on his inspection bill to us. More conflict of interest, right? The final result: all was fine and the work was completed quickly. Sometimes we have to trust and go with the flow to get things done in these rural areas.
I was very happy with my home inspector and he was recommended by the real estate agent. My inspector found an issue with the electrical panel. Recommended a new one. Then a few other minor repairs. My offer was based on the seller making those repairs.
