Buyers who don’t have their own agents either go to open houses or ask the listing agent to show them the home. Recently, many buyers like these have been asking me if they can put their offer in through me. This has been happening with increasing frequency not just to me, but to many other agents, as well. Knowing the business as well as I do, I know that what they’re really asking me is this: “If I put my offer in through you, will you cut your commission so I can get a better price?”.

When I tell them that there’s no advantage to them putting their offer in through me because I won’t cut my commission, I sometimes hear things like “I just remembered that my mother is an agent so I’ll ask her to do it” or “Guess I could call the agent who’s been showing me houses” or ” I know a few other agents so I’ll call one of them.”

You might be wondering “Why won’t he cut his commission?” There are a number of reasons:

• I don’t want to be on both sides of a transaction, even if my fiduciary duties are owed only to the seller.  It just doesn’t look right.
• If something goes wrong for the buyer, I wouldn’t want the buyer to blame me for not advising him properly, especially since it wasn’t my job to advise him in the first place as he wasn’t my client.
• If something goes wrong for my client the seller, I wouldn’t want her to be upset with me and think that I only recommended she take the offer because I was helping the buyer, too. (Can you tell from my way of thinking that I’m a former litigation lawyer?)
• Even if the buyer doesn’t ask me to cut my commission, I’d still tell him to ask another agent or his lawyer to put the offer in for him because I don’t care about the extra commission as much as I’m concerned about the extra potential liability and the fact that working both sides of the table doesn’t look right.
• If I were to cut my commission, I’d want my client to receive the benefit and not some random buyer.
• One of the questions other agents always ask the listing agent before presenting an offer is “Do you have an offer of your own?”. They ask because they’re concerned that if the listing agent has an offer of his own, he might divulge confidential information to his buyer  and/or he may cut his commission, thereby giving his buyer an unfair advantage. Other agents prefer not to get involved when their buyers may not be treated fairly. Having my own offer could hurt my seller client’s chances of getting other offers and I wouldn’t want that to happen.
• There’s no harm to the buyer because everybody knows or can find an agent to put an offer in for them, and if they can’t, they can always ask their lawyer to do so.

At the end of the day, my number one concern is getting the best deal possible for my client. I don’t really care about earning extra commission by putting an offer in for a buyer I don’t know. I know that almost every good agent to whom I’ve spoken about this issue feels similarly. So if you don’t have your own agent, the first thing I’d suggest you do is read You’re Buying a Home Without an Agent? If you still decide to go it alone, feel free to ask the listing agent if you can put your offer in through him or her,  but don’t be surprised by the answer and make sure you have a backup plan.