The longer a real estate agent does their job the more incredibly stupid and ignorant things we see. A listing agent often times does more damage for their clients than inspection items. A buyer came across a listing and the buyer’s agent looks at the listing. This home is about $200,000 less than the average sale price in the area. It is a beautiful home with a great lot. Located in a very desirable part of town. Doesn’t seem to have any major issues at first look. There is one red flag that is only seen on the broker side of the MLS. They are offering a very low buyer agent co op. This isn’t really a big deal because some brokers try to convince sellers that this isn’t going to effect the sale of their home. Many Realtors would beg to differ. This house should have sold at that price in no longer than 2 weeks to a month tops. It has been on the market for over 3 months now. Average days on market for that home at that price is 26 days. I always tell my sellers they do not EVER want to offer less than 2.5 % buyer agent co op. There are many times I take less than that on the sell side if I am helping them purchase a home as well.

Anyways that is not the part that absolutely pissed me off to the point of this blog post. The part that pissed me off was this listing broker told broker to put into the contract in additional provision to ask for more commission. There are so many things wrong with this request. For starters any broker that knows his/her head from their ass knows that you do not put anything in the offer to buy and sell real estate contract that references either broker. That contract does not, let’s say that again louder THAT CONTRACT DOES NOT INVOLVE BROKERS in any way! The contract to buy and sell is an instrument designed to have the buyer and seller come to an agreement on how to proceed with the purchase of the home. The listing agent and buyer agent are not parties to the contract. It is that simple!

The next huge problem with this request from this “Realtor” (that designation should be removed from this agent) is that you are making a real estate agents commision part of the negotiations for the contract to buy and sell. In other words if a buyer agent submits this offer and the seller would accept the contract as is without the clause to pay the buyer broker, let’s say 2.5% and that is the only reason the seller rejects the offer, you just did a huge disservice for the buyer and the seller. The seller rejects it solely on the clause regarding paying the commision to the buyer broker, something you requested the agent to do, you should lose your license because you do not have your clients best interest in mind.

If a listing agent ever tells you that the buyer agent co op fee is not an important thing to offer, they either do not know what they are doing or they are just trying to buy your listing from you. It is not doing you any favor to not offer a buyer co op of a reasonable amount. Real estate agents are just normal human beings. If your neighbor is offering over twice as much as you are for a buyer co op, the homes are the same and everything else is the same, your neighbors home will sell before yours. Especially since many agents put in the buyer agency that if the seller doesn’t pay a specific amount or percentage for a buyer co op, the buyer is responsible to make up the difference. The buyer does not want to pay their agent when the neighbor will pay on the seller’s side.