No, as the buyer you should not be paying someone to do their job. The seller pays the commission and it’s up to the brokers to work out their own payment deals.
Now, knowing that, you will understand why some brokers refuse to show properties they don’t list themselves. So, you may need to just call the listing agent. If it’s a legitimate broker they will tell you you need your own rep and will generally hand you off to someone in their office. Again, they will sort out how they get paid.
It’s possible if you are hiring someone to work for you, someone who only shows properties and doesn’t have any listings, they expect to be paid for the time they take with you.
Which is why I’d call the listing office and deal directly with the listing agent.
We were looking 16 years ago and we worked with multiple brokers, none of them asked us to pay them. We looked at about 15 places in 5 different states, so we worked with a lot of different offices..
One of the brokers I talked to got very upset because I called the number on another Inn I found on line, and he got wind of it. I was just calling whoever was listed in the ad and he called to lecture me for 15 minutes. I never had any agreement with him at all to use him as my exclusive buying broker. He then sent me an agreement to be the exclusive buying agent and get paid a certain amount if the seller and seller agent didn't pay his percentage. I didn't sign it, I just said "I'm not sure an Inn is for me yet, I'm just gathering info right now". I may still work with him because he has a lot of listings but won't be signing a buyers agent contract.
Thank God it sounds like this isn't normal and so I'm going to just call the listing agent from now on.
Are there workshops anyone here recommends?
Thank you so much for responding! (I did edit this about 4 times because I don't want anyone to recognize the realtor, it's a small industry and I don't want to cause trouble, I just want to possibly buy an Inn)
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