Luxury home buyers and sellers are certainly not immune to the problems of dual agency. Commissions on luxury homes often exceed $50,000 so why would anyone give up such important services as assistance with negotiating a price or negotiating terms of the transaction? When homebuyers use the listing agent to buy their homes not only are they giving up their right to representation on a million dollar asset, they are rewarding the agent for this betrayal with a double commission.
Here is a sampling from the blog post and a link to it:
“Looking at single family homes sold over $900,000 in one community, we were stunned to discover that 70% of one well-known listing agent’s sales were in-house; and in more than one in four sales, the MLS listed her as both listing agent and sales agent.” Click here for a link to the story. The story first appeared in the Boston Globe (the story is no longer online).