Is It Okay to Have Multiple Real Estate Agents?

Let’s say you’re getting down to the serious nitty gritty on deciding to sell your house or buy a house. And you know that you want a real estate agent to help you out. But you just can’t seem to decide on which one to use. Is it okay to use more than one agent? 

What are the ethics involved? 

While there aren’t any regulations against working with multiple agents on buying and selling your house, realtors affiliated with the National Association of Realtors have a specific code of ethics they follow that requires them to not interfere with another agent’s sales, if at all possible. 

Another big part of the code is related to honesty, and if the client is not being honest about how many different agents are involved with helping to buy or sell the house, then this will be problematic. 

And in the real estate world, many agents talk to each other especially if they work for the same real estate broker, just as in any business, and if you are keeping something from them, both agents will typically find out sooner or later, and then you may lose the services of both. Agents have access to the same MLS database system, so it’s easy for them to track something that other people might be working on. 

Since traditional agents work on commission, they’re basically working for free on helping you buy or sell your house, until closing time when they can receive their cut for their work. If they find out later that they might not get paid their real estate commission or they might get paid less than they thought, they may decide to stop helping you or at least not give you the service you deserve and expect. 

You want to create a competition

Or let’s say you are being open and up front about the fact that you want to consider multiple agents to help you, and you then tell multiple buyer’s agents that you want them to compete to get you your house, and that the commission will go to the winner. In this case, especially if they are busy agents, both may refuse to help you at all. It’s not fun for a traditional agent to think, as with the last honesty example, they might not get paid for their services.

You may also be setting yourself up to get blackballed from the other side as well. Since buyer’s agents talk to listing agents, the listing agents might not be excited to work with somebody that’s not playing fair. 

Finding the right agent

So okay, you’ve come to the conclusion that using 2 different agents to sell a home without them knowing or trying to use multiple agents for home buying with them knowing might not be a very good idea. So what now? Finding an agent isn’t as hard as you might think, as most information is publicly available. 

Check their experience

For starters, you can find information about an agent’s experience on Zillow. No matter how many organizations they belong to or how fancy their brokerage might be, make sure you look at their actual experience. Have they sold hundreds of homes or just a few a year. That’s a big deal. Also check out what neighborhoods they specialize in, if any. If you’re looking for homes for sale in a particular neighborhood, then that experience could be important. Same if you’re looking to sell your house too. 

How many real estate agents should you consider? 

Take it easy on yourself. As long as you remember that real estate experience is super important, the rest will take care of itself. You should consider no more than 3 agents when you’re looking to pick one. And if none of the 3 seem right this go-around, then start over with 3 new ones. Interview them, tell them openly that you’re shopping around, and pick the best one. They’ll all appreciate that you’re honest about that with them, and when you get the right one, stick with that one. 

Think about Trelora

Finding the right agent with a proven track record is the most important thing of all to help you buy or sell a home. You always want somebody that is most familiar with your circumstances, with your neighborhood, with your market and has the most experience in order to help you get the best possible results.

If you’re looking for a top agent in Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, or Washington state, do your homework and find someone that does more than a few deals per year. Look for experts who can help you. When you hire Trelora you’ll get best-in-class customer service, and a team of expert agents who close hundreds of deals per year. We are built for this.