Buying a Home? What is a Designated Buyer's Agent vs. Exclusive Buyer's Agent?

April 12, 2021 Wendy Carpenter-Israel

Here’s a Quick Overview to Understanding Real Estate Agency.

Represents only homebuyers, never sellers. As True Buyer’s Agents in order to avoid conflicts of interest or competing interests, EBAs and their buyer brokerage real estate company have always been about a focused business model and a clear-cut agency relationship. As Realtors, they have chosen not to take real estate listings, so homebuyers always will have their own representation. Buyers should search for Exclusive Buyer’s Agents and hire a skilled Realtor and buyers’ advocate who is 100% in their corner to evaluate homes with professional insight and provide the service and protection buyers deserve throughout the home buying process.
When working with an EBA, homebuyers will never be asked to sign a consent for a designated buyer agency or a dual agency form at the 11th hour. Trust. Transparency. Loyalty. Protection. Integrity. It’s that simple - from start to finish.

“Represents” both sellers and buyers at the same time.
The dual agent must remain neutral throughout the process. As a result, buyers and sellers lose out on the negotiating expertise, real estate advice, protection, transparency, loyalty that a true fiduciary relationship must provide to their clients. So what is the point of hiring a “buyer’s agent”, if they are no longer working on your behalf?

Sometimes represents sellers, and sometimes represents buyers.
As a result, they must break your buyer agent agreement and then assign you a new in-house “Designated Buyers Agent” if you want to make an offer on one of their personal listings. If you are interested in one of their real estate team’s listings or one of their real estate companies’ real estate listings they can break the original assign and have designated agents working both sides of the deal, but you can’t get out. You must now work with this new in-house real estate agent. Let that soak in. This fact should not be taken lightly when homebuyers have many options in the DMV.

Represents buyers or sellers in a specific transaction.
This is the homebuyers’ “new” real estate agent that is “assigned” to buyers when buyers want to make an offer or buy a company or real estate team listing. This change will happen to homebuyers if their original buyer’s agent works on a large team or a traditional real estate company. These designated agents profess to not have any conflicts, but they may literally be partners on the same team - Yikes! Remember, the Broker of a large Traditional Real Estate Company is still a Dual Agent. It’s just a Hat Trick. The Broker must represent the seller’s best interest and somehow also the buyers. It’s the law.