Is buyer agency a new wave in real estate?
Yes, for residential sales it has only been around since the early 1990s. Previously, you walked into a real estate agency looking to buy a house, and the realtor who showed you houses may have been a perfectly honest person, but he was in fact a subagent of the seller. How individual realtors dealt with this situation varied, but they often formed a real friendship with the buyers they worked with and wished they could stop up their ears when the buyers spoke freely of how high they’d be willing to go in price, or how they could get extra money from a parent or relative. The realtor wished he could stop up his ears because he is legally required to pass on to the seller’s agent any information that may be advantageous to the seller. This was an unnatural, intolerable situation. Yet many traditional agents still work as seller’s subagents, working for the seller as a subagent of the listing agent, even though they are showing buyers houses listed by other agencies. For this reason, the
