Dual Agency - Not Me!  I’m Pure.

Whoops?  Wait A Minute, What I’m Doing is Illegal?

by Linda O'Koniewski, Owner & CEO, RE/MAX Leading Edge

I get it.  You want to pledge your support, advice and wisdom to your client.  You don’t believe in dual agency because you don’t want to be compromised with your Seller or Buyer client.

But if you think you can avoid Dual Agency by giving your buyer client away when that client wants to buy your listing, you’d be wrong.

What?   “I got this covered,” you say to yourself.  Muffy and Buff are my buyer clients, but I am sending them over to my fabulous co-worker Carol so they can be represented when they buy my listing.  It sounds reasonable.

But you had signed an agency disclosure form with them as a buyers’ agent.  Every agency class you have ever taken was clear that you can’t “unring the bell”.  You can’t pretend they are not your clients when they make an offer on your listing, even if Carol writes the offer for them.  Are you supposed to conveniently forget that Muffy is pregnant, that the lease on their apartment is up in 60 days and that Buff just received a huge inheritance and could easily afford to pay more for this house?

So what’s an honorable agent to do when you have a buyer client and seller client who want to get married.  Well, unless you have prepared them and received a blessing “consent” to dual agency, you have no choice but to give both clients away.  Because if you choose to work with Muffy and Buff, you won’t be able to forget that the sellers are getting divorced, have received foreclosure notices and that one partner is being transferred across country pronto.

In fact, if you pass off one of your “buyers” to another agent to purchase your listing you are now practicing illegal dual agency.  YIKES!  Because you are still their buyers’ agent and you don’t have the disclosures and consent to practice.

And let me tell you, the seller who has hired you, and the buyer who has hired you, they don’t want to be given away.  They love you.  They trust you.  They chose you from all of the other agents out there to represent them.

That’s why it is important to discuss dual agency early in the process.  But before you can make your clients comfortable with it, you need to own it.  You need to understand it, and you need to understand why and how it can make for a smoother transaction.  If you can’t mentally and emotionally embrace dual agency, well neither can they.

First, it’s legal in Massachusetts to practice dual agency.  And that’s because it is unavoidable unless you release both parties to work with another agent.

There’s an upside to dual agency.  It takes the inherent friction out of the deal.  The agent becomes the mediator and facilitator and doesn’t take sides favoring either party.  The agent listens carefully to the concerns of each party and has a true understanding of what is really happening at the core because it isn’t filtered through another agent who may not be passing along key information.

As Claire Dembowski once stated from the stage, “I let all my clients know that I am their coach, but in the event we find ourselves in dual agency I become the umpire.”  Claire feels her job is to make sure the Sellers and Buyers have learned all the skills they need to go into the game well prepared.

I have always loved being a dual agent.  It eliminates a lot of the BS and misunderstanding.  When I (the buyer agent) call the listing agent (me), I know the conversation will go well because I get along rather well with myself, and I know I’m competent to handle the issues and problems professionally.

For Dual Agency to work well, actually to work at all, it must be introduced early in the process, and both the Sellers and the Buyers need to feel competent and be well-versed about the available strategies regarding pricing, attractive offers and tactics long before dual agency happens.

Alas… join us September 6 and 7 for our seminar “Buyers, Tigers & Bears, Oh My” to learn how to do this well.  Sign up by clicking here!