Fire your real estate agent when under contract to buy your home? ... 117

#badidea #realestateagent #homebuyer

The question was posed….can you fire your real estate agent while under contract to buy a house. I think that’s the wrong question…you may well be able to fire your real estate agent, but should you?

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Thoughts:

1. It’s the wrong question. You can break up with your real estate agent at any point. Will it cost you money? Maybe. Will it cause extreme duress on the part of you or your agent? Absolutely.

2. At what point is it best to break up with your real estate agent? That’s a tough question…I would say as early as possible, but at the same time, I don’t think that is always possible. Some examples.

a. You are an out of town buyer and you just don’t have a comfort level with the real estate agent that you’ve found. Until you get to working with them for a longer period of time, you aren’t going to know right away that you are not a good fit.
b. When your buyer agent shows you houses, it just isn’t working out…you just feel like you don’t want to be near the agent…like ever.
c. You find out something about your buyer agent that just causes you to not want to work with them. Maybe they just got out of jail, maybe they are mean to senior citizens…but there’s something that you find out that just makes you not want to be around the agent anymore…that would be a reason to leave.

3. In this real estate market, as hot as it has been, it’s rather easy to blame your buyer agent when you haven’t found a house or you are constantly outbid. I’ve fielded a few calls from frustrated would be home buyers who have an agreement in place with another real estate agent and are actively looking at homes with a buyer’s agent but the frustration with the market makes them want to switch. I have not taken up any clients on their desire to move.

4. The length of time matters. I have been showing houses to one couple for over a year. Most weekends are spent with these wonderful people. If they fired me tomorrow as a buyer’s agent, I would understand…but it usually doesn’t happen like that. Usually, the buyers sort of drift away to the point when they are no longer calling you to set appointments for showings. And that’s where I’m a little different than most real estate agents.

5. To me, buying a home is a contact sport. We need to be out there actively looking at homes, making offers, refining the wants/needs list and making sure our financing is in shape on more than a weekly basis. It’s not recommended you try to buy a home from your couch. So, if a home buyer isn’t doing that, I have no reason to think they will ever get a house under contract. Why should I press a buyer in that case to buy a home? It’s not the right time or something.

6. If you’ve worked with an agent for a number of months, and you know that the agent only gets paid when you actually buy a house, it is a pretty big jerk move to decide that you don’t want to work with that agent after you’ve finally gotten an offer accepted. The ill will that would come from most real estate agents would be off the charts.

7. It’s hard for me to imagine why anyone would want to switch agents after an offer has been accepted. It makes no sense to me that you would go that far and have the potential to kill your own deal because you want to switch real estate agents when you are in the home stretch. Better get the deal done and then never talk to the agent again when you are at the end then switch agents. This is my opinion.

Source: https://www.realtor.com/advice/buy/can-i-switch-real-estate-agents-after-i-make-an-offer-on-a-home/

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