List of Buyer Agents Who Will Discount Their Fees

THIS LIST IS FREE FOR HOMEBUYERS AND BUYER AGENTS.  It is our goal to educate consumers about negotiating broker fees.  CAARE derives no financial benefits from this list.  Watch out for firms that ask for your personal information before providing you with a lead to a buyer broker who discounts - those firms typically extract secret and substantial referral fees from your Realtor.

CAARE is a volunteer non-profit 501(c)3 charity dedicated to consumerism in residential real estate and we receive no fees and no advertising for sponsoring this LIST.  Please consider donating to CAARE by clicking on the DONATE button on the right column of this page.

THE LIST (click on your state):

Alabama   Alaska   Arizona   Arkansas   California   Colorado   Connecticut   Delaware   Florida   Georgia   Hawaii   Idaho   Illinois   Indiana   Iowa   Kansas   Kentucky   Louisiana   Maine   Maryland   Massachusetts   Michigan   Minnesota   Mississippi   Missouri   Montana   Nebraska   Nevada   New Hampshire   New    Jersey   New Mexico   New York   North Carolina   North Dakota   Ohio   Oklahoma   Oregon   Pennsylvania   Rhode Island   South Carolina   South Dakota   Tennessee   Texas   Utah   Vermont   Virginia   Washington   West Virginia   Wisconsin   Wyoming   

THE DETAILS AND WARNINGS (click here)

 About the List

This List should not have to exist.  If fee competition existed among buyer agents, more agents would advertise their fees instead of concealing them.  Instead, the buyer agent fee is almost never negotiated, it is fixed.  Instead of negotiating their fee, most agents only disclose their fee after the fact.  That is not competition.  That is price fixing.  A common misconception is that the buyer agent's fee is free because the seller pays it.  The Buyer agent's fee often exceeds $10,000 and that money comes out of the transaction that the buyer is funding.  It is not free.

By law, the broker fee is supposed to be negotiable (exception - these states actually prohibit homebuyers from negotiating the fee (click here)).  That means that  it is not acceptable for the fee to just get disclosed to the buyer,  it should be negotiated and agreed upon upfront with the buyer.  Once the buyer agent's fee has been negotiated, it can then be collected from the seller:  Any extra goes to the buyer, not the buyer's broker.  Unfortunately, most buyer brokers now pocket this difference providing them with an incentive to encourage you to buy the home with the highest fee. 

The Fee Agreement

Buyer brokers derive their right to get paid from a fee agreement that they sign with their buyers.  That agreement is between the buyer and their buyer broker, not the seller's broker.  From a contractual perspective, we are not even asking the buyer agent to discount their fee.  Instead, we are saying that buyer agents need to openly discuss and set their fee with their buyer clients before they begin working with them.  Any extra being paid by the seller goes to the buyer, not the buyer's agent.  We find it unacceptable for buyer brokers to set their fee at "whatever the seller happens to be paying," because that opens the door for seller agents to provide extra incentives (bribes) to your agent to get you to buy a particular house.  It is a terrible conflict of interest for the seller agent to set the buyer agent's fee.  The Multiple Listing Service is filled with properties where listing agents are offering inappropriate and secret financial incentives to buyer agents in the form of bonuses or higher than normal fees.  A buyer agent has a lot of influence in the decision making process of their clients and we want to eliminate financial conflicts of interests.

This list is intended to eliminate seller paid incentives and force buyer brokers to negotiate their fee up front.  The money going back to the buyer is not really a discount or even a rebate.  Rather, it is a refund of a fee overpayment. 

By eliminating seller paid financial incentives we aim to align the financial interests of the  buyer and the buyer agent.   If the buyer negotiates a fee that is less than what the seller is offering, then the remainder will be paid to the buyer (a "rebate").  We have found many agents who will pay a 25% referral fee to an agent in another state, but will not pay this same money to their own client for fear that the practice will cause fee competition.  Most agents do not want you to know that their fee is negotiable.

This is a list of buyer brokers who will not only negotiate their fee, but who will also agree to rebate the difference (between the seller offered amount) to their buyers.

Rebates

The practice of buyer agents rebating part of their fee has been around for a long time.  Here is a 2004 article from the Wall Street Journal about Bill Wendel, a well known Massachussets Exclusive Buyers Agent ("EBA") who routinely rebates part of the seller paid commission to his buyers (he's on The LIST).   In addition, the United States Department of Justice has taken a strong stance in favor of buyer rebates and has devoted an entire web page to educating consumers about this practice (it even has a Rebate Calculator).

Although there is a short list of states that prohibit rebates, do not trust your broker to tell you if your state is one of them.  We have reviewed multiple online forums where brokers have inaccurately stated that rebates are illegal.  Many brokers do not know that they are legal.  Most agents do not even understand that rebates are actually encouraged in the spirit of competition and are an important part of a free market system.

Negotiating the buyer agent fee is one of the most misunderstood yet most important aspects of any residential transaction.  CAARE homebuyers can benefit by thousands of dollars by just using our list.

BUYER AGENTS - SIGN-UP HERE:  We collect no referral fees - this list is free.  If you are a buyer agent and you are interested in being included on CAARE's LIST, then please e-mail us your credentials at info@caare.org .  Be one of the first to represent your state.