Woodlands Home Buyer: The closest thing to a free ride, buyer's representation!
I still get people asking me "so how much do I pay you?" as a buyer's representative. Well, in almost 99% of cases, there is no payment from the buyer to the realtor. The realtor's commission is paid by the seller.
In the 1% of cases where the buyer might end up contributing to the realtor's commission is in the case of a seller possibly not paying the agreed upon commission. So, say the agreed commission was 3% to the buyer's agent. The seller insists on paying no more than 2.5%. So, in theory, the buyer would be liable to make up the 0.5% to the realtor representing them.
Usually though, most realtors just let it slide and essentially end up working for less than what they agreed upon.
So, the buyer almost never pays anything towards their realtor's commission.
That's great news! You get personal representation, loads of service, get driven around in someone else's car using someone else's gas (pretty cool with today's high gas prices!) and you don't pay anything for it! You can't get much better than that!
Do you have any "buyer rep" stories? Let's have them!