Are you currently working with another real estate agent?

That is a question you will almost always hear me ask if you contact me about looking at real estate. Why is that an important question? It is important because as a REALTOR we are supposed to respect other agents work and not set out to take their customers or clients from them.

Twice in the last few days I have seen it happen. An agent gets a call and the buyer wants to see a house that they have listed or is listed in their office. So, we ask the question, "Are you currently working with another real estate agent?" The prospective buyer says "No" so we meet them and show them a house. Well in my case I got out on a Saturday morning and met "my buyer". He and his wife spent well over an hour with me and I sold them on the house. In the process we talked about agency and how I would be working in this transaction. He told me he liked the house and would decide by the first of the week. The next day, Sunday, he came to my Open House with his wife and mother and stayed and talked for quite a while. He still never said he was working with another agent. Before he left he said he would get with me by Tuesday to write the offer. He asked me for a little more information which I got for him the next day. Monday afternoon another agent called me and told me he had an offer for me on the house. I called "my buyer" to let him know that an offer was coming and if he wanted the house he needed to make an offer immediately. He still didn't tell me until he called me back later that the "other" offer was from him.

If you are a consumer, please do not do this to your agent or any other agent! It is not fair to either one of them. Obviously, I would not do anything to hurt the sale of my seller's house, but I am clearly the procuring cause for this sale. The other agent had not even shown the house to this buyer at that time. Of course, he feels that he has an ongoing relationship with this buyer and so he should get the sale. What makes no sense is that the buyer when asked the question, "Are you currently working with another real estate agent?" said "No". If you are an agent, please, please, please educate your buyers to tell other agents that they are working with you. If this buyer had told me his agent was out of town or unavailable, because it was my listing, I would have still made a way to get him in to look at the house. That being said I am glad the house is under contract and will work as hard as I can to see that it closes.