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What is an exclusive buyer’s agent and what is a designated buyer’s agent?

Exclusive buyer’s agents work in companies that represent only buyers. When all the agents and the broker work only for buyers, this is an exclusive buyer agency.

Advantages:

1. Our skills training aims at helping buyers make good decisions. We are not distracted from this by needing to also focus on marketing houses for sale.
2. Office meetings focus on ideas to help buyers in the current market. We don’t think rising prices are good. We don’t applaud bidding wars.
3. No one in the office will be negotiating for the seller of a place you might want to buy.
4. Office politics are not affected by being tough, but fair, negotiators.
5. The agents can work cooperatively — instead of competitively — since we don’t negotiate directly against one another.
6. We believe this single-focus work environment leads to better buyer agency services for our clients.

Designated buyer’s agents work in companies that represent buyers and sellers.

1. They work in an office where the management is working hardest to get property listings and please house sellers.
2. Some “buyer specialists” work on “teams” that include a listing agent. (These are the buyer’s agents you see running open houses.)
3. They are put in a position of negotiating against long-term co-workers on behalf of their clients.
4. Some even – erroneously — call themselves “exclusive buyer’s agents,” if they work only with buyers. This is not correct if their agency represents both buyers and sellers.

We have chosen the exclusive buyer agency model because it affords us the ability to collaborate and focus on buyer services instead of marketing. By working in this model, we have collected a large body of experience to help buyers.