Can You Buy a House Without a Realtor? Two Agents Say Yes.

Episode summary

Search "how to buy a home without a realtor" and the first result is an agent telling you it's like performing surgery on yourself. We're agents too, and we think that's nonsense. Buying without representation is a perfectly legitimate way to participate in the housing market. Whether it's right for you is a different question — and that's the one this episode actually answers.

The money first. Since the settlement, a seller expects to pay a buyer's agent roughly 2.25–2.75% of the price. On a $650,000 home that's about $15,000 sitting on the table. Unrepresented, that $15,000 becomes yours to deploy: your at-asking offer nets the seller $15K more than an identical offer from a represented buyer, or you offer $15K less and the seller nets the same. Either way it's real buying power you didn't have to come up with.

Then the access problem. Open houses are the easy answer, and you can hire a touring agent per showing. But the most direct route is calling the listing agent — and that's where the friction starts, because a lot of them will try to convert you into a dual-agency client instead. The unlock is language: you're not a prospective client, you're a customer. A listing agent's duty to market their seller's home includes showing it to qualified customers. Ask to sign a non-agency disclosure, bring a pre-approval, expect to be verified. Show up looking like someone who's done the reading and the whole conversation changes.

And the honest limits. A listing agent can hand you the standard forms and explain what a field means — that's clerical work in service of their seller. They cannot tell you what to put in it, recommend contingencies, or reveal anything about the seller's position. Their job is to protect the seller, not you. A real estate attorney runs under $1,000 for contract help and is usually the right backstop.

Who shouldn't do this: buyers in frenzied multiple-offer markets, buyers of complex properties (septic, wells, historic homes, luxury systems), anyone without the time or drive to get educated, high earners whose hourly is worth more than the commission — and, candidly, anyone who knows they get emotional in a negotiation. We've watched deals die over $500 on a million-dollar house.

Hosted by Nick Aufenkamp and Dave Miller of The Tartan Team, brokered by Real Broker, LLC. Serving Clark County and Southwest Washington.

In this episode

• [02:25] The premise: buying a home without an agent
• [02:55] Nick's DIY Home Buyer Academy — and his son's very good question
• [04:00] "It's like performing surgery on yourself" — why that comparison fails
• [05:29] Does the industry pretend this is harder than it is?
• [06:13] The electrician analogy: some jobs you DIY, some you don't
• [07:50] The awkward part: we're agents, and we like representing people
• [09:05] Market context — why 2021 would have been a terrible time to try this
• [11:20] The money: how an unrepresented buyer actually saves
• [13:50] How the old commission model worked, and what the lawsuit changed
• [17:21] The $15,000 on a $650K home — and two ways to spend it
• [20:13] Reason two: protection from a bad agent
• [24:27] Reason three: incentive alignment
• [26:30] Access — how do you tour homes without an agent?
• [28:16] Showing services, portals, and calling the listing agent
• [30:21] Client vs. customer — the distinction that unlocks the conversation
• [32:08] Ask to sign a non-agency disclosure
• [33:00] Why verification requests are reasonable, not hostile
• [34:46] Why listing agents resist: implied agency and performance risk
• [38:23] How to be taken seriously: talk the language, bring the pre-approval
• [42:11] Writing the offer — what a listing agent can and can't do for you
• [44:03] When to bring in a real estate attorney
• [48:06] What a listing agent can never tell you
• [49:51] The upside nobody mentions: fewer parties, faster communication
• [50:22] Who should represent themselves — and who shouldn't
• [55:42] Time, capacity, and when your hourly beats the commission
• [58:00] The EQ problem: deals that die over $500
• [1:00:17] Tunnel vision — the single biggest pitfall
• [1:02:20] The verdict: absolutely yes, but not for everyone

Links from this episode

• Episode 12 — Dual Agency in Washington: When One Agent Represents Both Sides — the previous episode, and essential background for the listing-agent conversations here
• How to Tour a Home Without an Agent in Washington — the practical companion: the three routes in, the script, and what to bring
• What Your Washington Real Estate Agent Owes You — the client/customer distinction and the duties a listing agent owes an unrepresented buyer
• NWMLS First Look, Explained — why unrepresented buyers lost ground in the Compass–NWMLS settlement
• Book a Strategy Call

Transcript

Reconstructed from the dual-track recording and lightly edited for readability with AI assistance. Wording is preserved; speaker attribution in fast back-and-forth is approximate.

Nick (00:00): Hey, welcome back to Disclosures. I am your host, Nick Aufenkamp, along with my wonderful co-host, Dave Miller. Dave, how's it going, man?

Dave (00:06): It's going well, man.

Nick (00:09): Welcome back from San Antonio. Not that this has any profitable bearing on the podcast, but it's one of those things where you just kind of feel like you're repeating the same day over and over again. And what I'm referring to is: this is take two of this podcast. Nick's long-suffering internet at Tartan HQ cut us out midway through recording this same podcast.

Dave (00:29): I feel like I'm living in the Twilight Zone a little bit.

Nick (00:42): Fortunately it wasn't because of my equipment failure — Xfinity was down for the entire area for a few hours. But you know what, my question was still sincere. Even though I've heard it all before: has your experience, or your retelling of your time in San Antonio, changed any from the last time you shared it with me?

Dave (01:02): It's the mood swings, man. It's high and low. The memory for detail is sharp, but the emotional experience — it's like you relive it differently every day. No, San Antonio was great. If you hadn't heard on the last podcast, I was down there for a high-performance building conference called Build Show Live. Primarily attended by home builders and high-end remodelers — which was my former life back in Minneapolis. So part of that is still career interest and novel interest that I have just as something I'm passionate about, but also because I think real estate agents need to up their game. It helps for realtors to know how homes are built and what makes a good home.

Nick (02:05): Up their game just a little bit. There's just — it seems altogether too many people running around selling stuff they have no idea about.

Dave (02:15): Yeah, that's I think a fair critique.

Nick (02:20): And one that I think we're going to pick up on in the next week or two in an episode — we'll collect the thoughts from your time in San Antonio. I love that you took the time to do that, and I'm glad that it was good.

Nick (02:25): For this week, I want to talk about buying a home without a real estate agent. I think this feels like an especially relevant question. As many of you know, a couple of years ago I started another thing called the DIY Home Buyer Academy, where I was creating YouTube videos on how to buy a home without a realtor — as my, at the time, nine-year-old son had asked me: "Hey Dad, does that mean that you're like teaching people how to do your job without you?"

Dave (03:07): A billion-dollar business idea, I see.

Nick (03:12): Yeah, exactly. And so it did seem sort of like this antithetical — how do you swim in both of these streams at the same time? But it's been a great couple of years of creating that content and education. And one of those videos that I did a couple of years ago was how to buy a home without a realtor, and that's performed extremely well. And now it feels like, hey, we can be honest about the realities of buying a home without an agent, as real estate agents.

Nick (03:46): Because it's funny — you were sharing a video with me just a couple months ago, and your retelling of it would be better than mine. But you had searched on YouTube, like, "how to buy a home without an agent." What was the first video that popped up?

Dave (04:05): Yeah, some agent — I can't remember where — and he's like, "Yeah, you could buy your own house, but why would you want to do that? That would be like performing surgery on yourself, or representing yourself in court." Even the really exaggerated attempt to make it seem like it would be the most preposterous thing in the world. When in reality I think you and I would say representing yourself is probably less complicated than both of those.

Nick (04:40): Certainly less complicated than brain surgery. I think anybody who is comparing buying a home without an agent to performing your own root canal — I think those are apples and oranges.

Dave (04:59): I like better the appendix surgery. It's minor, and it's more down here on the chest. If you screw it up, you'll still probably live. Any time you have to get a mirror involved, that's just a really hard thing. Like, you ever try to give yourself a haircut on the back of your head?

Nick (05:29): How much of it is the fact that, as an industry — as a lot of industries do — we like to pretend that what we're doing is a lot more complicated than it is? And that's not to say there aren't true risks involved. The primary reason most people hire an agent is strictly because the potential error, the worst-case scenario, has a very high monetary penalty.

Dave (05:58): But that's all to say, everything in life you can do has some penalty if you screw it up.

Nick (06:04): And there's a gradient, right? Like with your background as an electrician — I have no background formally as an electrician, but I've changed a few outlets in my house in my day and I've watched some YouTube videos, so there's a degree to which I can DIY electrical work. But I'm not going to change out the panel in my home. That's something I'm going to call a licensed electrician for. And I think a similar kind of thing applies to a real estate transaction — there are some transactions that are very straightforward, that most anybody has at least the competence to do and just perhaps would need a bit of education to truly feel confident doing themselves. And then there are other deals that are extremely complicated and unique, where the value of having a professional on your side is well worth it.

Nick (07:12): So the point of this podcast really is to just dive into: why would somebody choose to represent themselves? The high level of how to — this isn't going to be a deep dive on every step of the process, but at a high level, what to consider. And then really, who should and shouldn't consider representing themselves.

Nick (07:40): And maybe to just get the awkward part out of the way first. We are agents. We love representing home buyers and sellers. I don't think that anybody who has chosen to work with us is doing so because they're too stupid to buy a home on their own, at all. They're hiring us because they believe there is outsized value — that we're providing more value in the transaction than whatever it is that we're taking in our compensation. And it's because we're convinced of that sort of value that we're able to be honest about the realities of representing yourself versus hiring an agent, and not just put everybody into the same bucket of either you should or shouldn't.

Dave (08:33): Something I think is interesting — I don't know if we've touched on this in personal conversations, but something that's tricky about what we do representing buyers is, so often when a buyer sets out on the home buying journey, you don't really know how good or bad it's going to go. And there are so many factors that go into what that outcome is. And I'm not saying one specific property — I'm saying it could be multiple properties.

Dave (09:05): If we said a couple of years ago, when everything was going to multiple-offer scenarios, that would be a really hard environment for an unrepresented buyer to be taken seriously. And we'll get into a little bit of the pathology that listing agents have around people who come to transactions and say, "I'm unrepresented, I don't have an agent." There is a real fear and a real risk. So you've got to zoom out and look at the broader context of your local market. If it's a really hot market and homes are not sitting — we're going under fifteen days on market for the area you're looking to buy — you could end up being very frustrated.

Nick (10:04): As is most of the time, not blanket advice. But maybe say now the market has definitely corrected and we're seeing stuff sit forty, fifty, sixty days on market with surprising regularity at this point. And so if you were an unrepresented buyer and you were thinking, "Yeah, maybe I could save some money here and maybe I could handle this myself" — that's an environment that's a little bit better suited for an unrepresented buyer.

Dave (10:32): So we'll get into some of the mechanics of that, but at the onset, that's the thing to keep in mind: it's not blanket advice, and certain people have more capacity for handling the process than others. If you're, let's just say, a lawyer, you can probably handle the real estate contract, given that lawyers wrote all of the standard state contracts.

Nick (10:55): I'm going to hope that if you're a lawyer, you can figure the contract out. I don't know where they're keeping that bar these days.

Dave (11:15): Well, you were already suggesting it, so let's just go there explicitly. Why would somebody want to represent themselves? Let's stick specifically to the buyer side right now, although I think the arguments are equally applicable to the listing side. So why would you?

Nick (11:25): Money.

Dave (11:27): Money's always the answer. All right, how in the world does that work? Especially when, from the buyer side — doesn't the seller pay the agent? Isn't buyer agency free to home buyers? That's what they keep telling us.

Nick (11:45): We should both raise our hand, because we're part of the industry that keeps telling everyone it's free to home buyers to purchase a house. We covered a little bit of the mechanics of the transaction in previous episodes where we went over the Sitzer/Burnett lawsuit. But historically speaking, you are correct that listing agents came to their sellers and said, "Hey, some agent is going to bring a buyer, and there's going to be an expectation that we pay that agent's commission."

Dave (12:32): Now, there was a big lawsuit over that, because there's a ton of conflicts of interest with the system being set up that way. The listing agent would advertise a buyer's agent commission. So they'd say, "Hey, buyer's agents, if you bring a person who will buy this house that I have listed, I will pay you two and a half percent" — was what we would see around here.

Nick (13:08): And it was kind of just baked into the cost of the transaction, and a consideration for the seller on whatever price they listed the house at. So no seller was saying, "Yeah, just out of the goodness of my heart I'm happy to pay a buyer agent." They would be looking at the net amount. On a million-dollar listing they would be anticipating: okay, if two and a half percent is going to a buyer's agent, that's twenty-five thousand dollars — maybe I'll list it at actually a million twenty-five thousand.

Dave (13:33): Maybe a better way to think about it is, as an industry, agents worked really hard to get sellers to be of the mindset that, well, five to six percent is the total it costs to sell my home. And then how that commission trickled down to the different parties — usually just two, a buyer's agent and a seller's agent — that all had a lot of conflicts of interest around it. So not to rehash it, but maybe just give the quick overview: what changed from a law perspective? What can't we do anymore?

Nick (14:38): It's maybe closer to five and a half out here. It was six percent back in Minnesota for the most part. And we say "standard commission" — we're doing standard in air quotes — because technically it was always negotiable. But it's kind of like, if you want to buy milk at the grocery store and every store you go to is charging five bucks a gallon, well, that's the standard price.

Nick (15:10): So really quickly on this. From the seller side, you explained it exactly right. The conversation used to just be with your agent: "Hey, commission's going to be six percent, and then I'm going to split that with a buyer's agent if there is one." So the seller largely didn't even have to think about it. They just knew it's going to cost me six percent to sell my home. And then the listing agent would say to other buyer agents, "Hey, I'm going to give you three percent, two and a half, whatever it was, for bringing a buyer" — which meant that buyer agents never had to have the conversation with buyer clients about what they were getting compensated. The lawsuit changed all of that.

Nick (15:51): So now on the listing agent side, there are two conversations. There is: here's what I'm going to receive in compensation as the listing agent. Generally now that's closer to about three percent here in Clark County — again, not set, not standardized, but typically around there. And then there's a separate conversation about what does a buyer agent get compensated.

Nick (16:17): The way that we have that conversation with our sellers is to say, we're not going to offer anything up front, because that's negotiating against yourself. However, most buyers will likely have an agent. Most buyers are not going to have the extra funds to compensate that agent out of pocket. They're going to request you to pay them as a seller concession. Let's account for that somewhere in the neighborhood of two-and-a-half-ish percent, but it's all negotiable as we negotiate the terms of the deal.

Nick (16:44): And then on the buy side, before a buyer signs an agency agreement with their buyer's agent and begins touring homes, they need to have that compensation conversation. And that's really the new part. Most buyer agents in our area, they're going to say, "Yeah, it's around two and a half percent, and we'll just negotiate for the seller to cover my fee." That's generally how that conversation goes.

Dave (17:21): So tying this all back into unrepresented buyers — how in the world does an unrepresented buyer save money?

Nick (17:32): If you know that you're going to put an offer in on a house and that seller is expecting to pay your agent — let's just use a round number and say fifteen thousand dollars on, I don't know, six hundred fifty thousand at two and a half percent. We'll call it two and a quarter to two and three-quarter percent of the purchase price. So it could be more, it could be less. There's fifteen thousand they're expecting to pay a buyer's agent.

Nick (18:06): If I come in and give an at-asking-price offer, and let's say I'm going up against somebody else who has a buyer's agent who also puts in an at-asking-price offer — because they're not going to have to pay my buyer's agent, because I'm representing myself, they won't have to pay that commission. My offer, in terms of the seller's net sheet — what the total amount they net at the end of the transaction is — is going to be fifteen thousand better than a same-asking-price offer from somebody who has an agent.

Dave (18:47): So you have essentially fifteen thousand dollars more of buying power than a comparable represented buyer.

Nick (18:55): And how you use that buying power really just depends upon the particulars. If it's a multiple-offer situation, then without having to spend extra money, your offer becomes more attractive than competing offers. If it's like what you were talking about earlier, where a house has been sitting for a long time and there's no competing offers — well then you have more leverage to say, "Hey, because I don't have an agent, I'm actually offering fifteen thousand dollars less," which still nets you, seller, the same as it would if I did have an agent. But now it's kind of a win-win for both of us, because you're still getting the same amount as a full-price offer and I'm saving fifteen grand on whatever I'm paying for the house.

Nick (19:47): So that's the biggest reason that somebody would want to represent themselves. And the math works the same on the listing side, really — it's just that you're able to save on those transaction fees. And that can be to the tune of ten, twenty, thirty thousand dollars, at all scales, as the price of the house goes up.

Dave (20:13): Is it just money, or are there other reasons beyond that that somebody might consider self-representation?

Nick (20:20): Obviously money, as they say, makes the world go round.

Dave (20:26): I thought it was gravity.

Nick (20:29): Gravity holds us together? I don't know. Or is that love? The money is obviously a huge deal when we're talking in the tens of thousands of dollars. This isn't a minor issue. You could offer the same price and really leverage your opportunity in a competitive market by not overpaying — it's a way to effectively go over asking price on a house without actually having to come up with that money.

Nick (21:11): But I'd say the second thing, that may be almost as important, is just the reality that unless you have an agent you really know and trust — and we should back up and say, hopefully if you're representing yourself, you're getting yourself educated on the process and you're not just flying into this and running into a wall. If you're educated, if you are taking more ownership of the process than you would have if you're like, "I have this professional who's going to help me" — you are able to represent your interests better than anyone can for you.

Nick (22:04): That's typically how we say it when we're talking with people who are asking, "Well, can I do this?" And the answer is: not everyone should, but most people are capable if they're willing to put the time and effort in to learn. And your understanding of the process that you're going to have by educating yourself and going through it yourself — you're going to have more confidence in what is being done for you, whether you're doing the actions or it's being done on your behalf.

Nick (22:33): So I'd say protection from a bad agent is really pretty high up there, in terms of being able to represent yourself and know that, hey, I'm not being steered, I'm not being advised to hurry up and close so a buyer's agent can get a commission. There is a real value there in taking the transaction into your own hands. And we're saying all this under the assumption that you're doing the effort to educate yourself — because if you think you know and you're trying to take it in your own hands, you might just be shooting yourself in the foot. But in general, if you put the work in, you're going to have a high degree of confidence in what's being done on your behalf or by yourself.

Dave (23:22): Education is power. And unfortunately, like with so many professional industries, you only know if you have a bad agent typically after the transaction is done — after it's too late. It's like having a bad surgeon or a bad stockbroker. In a lot of cases you might have a bad one and never know. You might actually be completely happy, because you didn't take the time to educate yourself on the transaction — you just don't understand enough of the process to be able to spot where you sort of got steered, or had the wool pulled over.

Nick (23:57): You overpaid for the house by thirty grand and your agent got paid twenty thousand dollars to help you do it. So yes, absolutely — we believe an educated consumer is the best consumer, which is largely why we do this podcast.

Nick (24:27): And then the third thing that I would add is just incentive alignment. I think there are a lot of buyers that are concerned about the fact that they are hiring an agent who only gets paid if that buyer purchases a home. And that can create some weird dynamics, where the person you're entrusting to advise you — they also are incentivized to push you forward through the process. There's a number of ways that plays out. I won't belabor all of them here.

Dave (25:12): Yes, absolutely, a good agent really will look out for your best interest. But good agents are so few and far between, unfortunately. And at the end of the day, I just don't know that there's anybody who's going to look out for your interests better than you.

Nick (25:33): Pretty safe to say. I guess you could get really existential about it and say, well, if you're not treating yourself well, or you think poorly of yourself, then maybe you're going to say, "I don't deserve that." But not to get too far down that rabbit hole — in general, you are going to have your best interest in mind. There's no conflict there.

Dave (25:59): At least you should. You raise a good example — I think of the whole industry of personal training, built around the fact that while we kind of know what's best for us, sometimes we need somebody to help us stay focused on that. And I think that's really the role of a good buyer agent: the advisory, the counsel, not the selling.

Nick (26:23): Without getting too far down that rabbit hole, I think that does a good job of just explaining the why: the potential for money savings, being educated better on the home buying process, having a deeper understanding — and all of that plays into there being no weirdness about alignment of incentives, and sort of the autonomy of "hey, I'm going to take full responsibility for my best interests."

Nick (26:55): At a high level, how do you do it? I think the number one hesitancy and question that people have when they're considering representing themselves is just access to homes. How do I tour a home if I don't have an agent?

Dave (27:22): I say this because we've been trying to help agents, but there is some resistance. So I guess that's just to be honest about all of this — it is hard right now, because the industry as a whole doesn't like unrepresented buyers as a category. And maybe we'll get into this on this podcast, or maybe we'll save it for its own — I don't know, blooper reel, agent fail episode — of stories and different things we've run across where you deal with listing agents who are just dead set on double-ending the transaction. The inside-baseball language of that is it means representing both the seller and the buyer in the transaction. You can listen to last week's episode on dual agency; we did a deep dive there.

Dave (28:16): So it can be hard as an unrepresented buyer to get access to houses. There are services — it's also getting a little trickier, at least here in Washington now, with touring agreements being necessary for licensed agents to show homes. There's just a paperwork aspect. But in general, you might be able to get a showing service like Showami to get you into the home. Or you could use a Zillow or a Redfin, where you respond — and then just know that you're going to have to go in, it's like a timeshare pitch. If you're going to meet that agent at the property, they're going to try to get you to sign a buyer's agency agreement.

Nick (28:58): But a lot of the time the most straightforward way is going to be to call the listing agent directly. And unfortunately, as I already alluded to, a lot of listing agents will look at that as an opportunity to double-end the transaction. And a lot won't — a lot will say, "I can't help you if you're unrepresented." Walk through properties that are showing at open houses.

Dave (29:28): Well, I suppose open houses was the easiest answer.

Nick (29:33): We were getting there. But in general, the listing agent's job is to sell their client's house. And so if they're a good agent, they should be trying to make every accommodation possible to get as many eyes on it. Unfortunately, sometimes you have listing agents who are phoning it in, and they might be really mad because they don't want to take twenty-five, thirty, forty minutes out of their day to let you into the house.

Nick (30:14): But in general: contact the listing agent, and look for open houses.

Nick (30:21): And the distinction that I would make that's really important — there's a huge distinction between a client and a customer. Any time that you are working with a buyer agent, they are treating you as a client, which is why you need to have some sort of an agency agreement. And this also gets into the touring agreements and all of that. However, with a listing agent, the listing agent already has a client, and that is the home seller. And as a result, they have duties to that client to market and sell the property. And part of those duties to market and sell is to show the home to any qualified potential customer — which is you, so long as you are unrepresented.

Nick (31:03): And that's really, in the conversation with a listing agent, sometimes the unlock that those agents need: for you to use that kind of language. "Hey, I'm not calling you as a potential client — as a customer, I would like to see the home." And then it starts to bring the whole framework of the transaction back into something that we understand.

Dave (31:30): With buying a car, everybody recognizes that when you walk into a dealership, the salespeople there represent the dealer, and that you are coming in as a customer. And it kind of gets ridiculous when we start to think: well, what sales agent wouldn't want to meet you on the lot so that you can see cars that you're interested in? What sales agent would demand that you have another agent bring you to the lot?

Nick (32:08): So that's part of the conversation with listing agents — to just know what your rights are. A listing agent can always show you their listing. They can show an unrepresented buyer the listing without requiring an agency agreement. In fact, I would take it a step further, and this will show that you've educated yourself some: if you call a listing agent requesting a tour, say that you would like to sign a non-agency disclosure. It's not an agreement, but it's just legally recognizing that, hey, I'm the customer here, you have clients already that you represent — and it heads off any sort of weirdness.

Nick (32:35): Now, perfectly legitimate: if that agent is going to be meeting you one-on-one for the first time at a seller's property, they might want some verification of identity, verification of funds, a pre-approval letter. Putting yourself in the seller's shoes, that's totally fine. You sort of expect, as a seller, that anybody who's coming in with a buyer agent has been vetted by that buyer agent. So you'd expect that the listing agent would do the same thing. And as an unrepresented buyer, that's totally cool — be willing to share your pre-approval.

Dave (33:26): You have to understand that part of what the buyer's agent is bringing is a level of accountability to the transaction when they're unlocking the door to a house that they don't own and touring someone through — as opposed to if you're by yourself, the seller's agent can't just let you go through. In Washington, in order to get your real estate license, you have to do a background check, because the state takes this pretty seriously.

Nick (33:56): It becomes maybe less important if the home is completely vacant, but in most cases you're walking through somebody's living space. And there's all sorts of concern around theft and home invasion and all sorts of stuff like that that is sort of always in the background of good agents' minds. So absolutely, if an unrepresented buyer is calling a listing agent, there should be some degree of formal — what's the word I'm looking for?

Dave (34:35): Verification.

Nick (34:37): Verification. Absolutely.

Nick (34:46): And when we think about that — why do listing agents hesitate to work with unrepresented buyers? The cynical take is, of course, because they want to get paid more money. And cynical doesn't mean untrue. That is a part of it — they view unrepresented buyers as a threat not only to their own personal finances, but most listing agents are also buyer agents, and the fewer buyers that are using agents means the less business there is for them and the industry. So that's okay to recognize.

Nick (35:16): But I would encourage, for having a productive conversation with a listing agent, to table the cynicism and instead focus on: what are the potential risks that that agent brings on by working with you as an unrepresented buyer?

Nick (35:32): There's the liability of, one, implied agency. Listing agents are rightfully — this is why that non-agency disclosure is so important. But no matter how careful that agent might be, there is the concern that an unrepresented buyer will accuse that agent of "I thought you were my agent, I thought you were representing me, I thought you were helping me here." So implied agency can be a legitimate concern.

Dave (36:09): There's also this concern that you, as an unrepresented buyer — if it's maybe your first home, or you've only gone through a couple of transactions and the last one was a decade ago — they're concerned that you're not going to perform on the deal. That you are a riskier buyer because you're not represented by somebody who's done ten-plus transactions in the last twelve months. So they're just concerned that there's going to be some gotcha, that you're not going to follow through, and therefore higher risk.

Nick (36:51): To be successful in most things, you really have to go into the process with a clear understanding of the moving parts of it. Any time a listing agent and a seller accept an offer, the house comes off the market — and that can really hurt the optics on a home. If you don't understand how inspection contingencies work, or you didn't even really think about it, and somebody — your uncle who's a plumber — tells you, "If you didn't scope the drain, then I wouldn't even buy the house," and then you get scared, maybe you lose your earnest money.

Dave (37:32): Earnest money — in nine out of ten cases, maybe even ninety-five out of a hundred, a seller getting whatever small amount of earnest money because a buyer defaults on a contract usually doesn't pay for the overall hit that they're going to get on the sale price. Unless we're talking an incredibly hot market where they can just throw it back on the market and it'll get snapped up.

Nick (38:01): So there's a real monetary and a time risk that a seller and the seller's agent have to take into consideration if they're taking an unrepresented buyer. And so the best way to be taken seriously as an unrepresented buyer is to understand the process and learn — not in a sneaky way, but learn to talk like an agent and understand what the terminology means.

Dave (38:31): And show up with a pre-approval letter. If you're asking a seller's agent to tour you through a house and they're like, "Well, are you pre-approved?" and you're like, "Pre-what?" — they know you're a tire kicker. At that point you've already destroyed any goodwill you could have had. The agent knows you don't understand anything about the transaction, they know they're going to have to do a ton of extra work, and there is a significantly larger amount of risk for their seller.

Nick (39:18): And that's really the problem. I'm sure anybody who's made it this far into the episode is not this person, but there are people that will just see the listing agent sign and call, or walk into an open house, and they're essentially looking for the listing agent to do a bunch of extra free work for them. That's not a fair expectation for anybody in any profession. And even if you're the most cynical person about what a buyer agent does, there is a lot of transaction coordination, communications, facilitation of the deal. There's a lot of presence when it comes to showing up for inspections and reviewing those reports. The listing agent does not want to have to take all of that on for no additional compensation from you or from their seller.

Nick (39:53): And so for you to at least acknowledge the fact that "hey, I'm just a customer, I'm not looking for you to take on a bunch of extra work, and here's my plan" — whether that's a real estate attorney that I'm working with, or a consultant, or I've already established these relationships with this escrow officer — just showing that you've got some people in your corner and that you have thought through these things is going to set you apart from every other tire kicker that is essentially just looking for a listing agent to do free work.

Dave (40:56): So we know how to get into the house. Without getting too far into doing the whole transaction, because it's too much for one podcast — there is legitimate work that needs to be put in, and check out some of the DIY Home Buyer videos if you want a more detailed breakdown. But maybe in the time left, maybe we just go through some of the issues we've seen, some of the complaints that have been raised, and some of the resistance that a buyer might run up against. And maybe we'll segue that into our next podcast on listing agents not doing their job.

Nick (41:45): So access to homes is a big one. The next big question is: okay, once you're ready to make an offer on the house, as an unrepresented buyer, how do I go about this? And this is also where listing agents have some of the most hesitancy — whether because they're just ignorant, or whether it's out of something more, they're trying to make life harder.

Nick (42:11): But this is where that customer/client distinction comes in really helpful again. What I always recommend as an unrepresented buyer is that you have the listing agent provide the standardized purchase and sale agreement and the contingencies that you request. Listing agents will feel like, "This feels like something that I do for a client" — which in most cases is true. They are providing you the documents in service to a client, but you are not the client. They're providing you those documents in service to their seller, because they're trying to get a deal done on behalf of their seller. So that agent can do what would be considered clerical work on the seller's behalf.

Nick (43:03): It's the same as if you walked into a model home. Most home builders, instead of using state standardized contracts, use their own builder contracts that a lawyer has drawn up. And the agent in the sales office does not represent you as a buyer, but they're still able to walk you through the contract, explain in plain language what it means. And while they might not be able to give you direction on "here's exactly how to fill this out," or what dollar amount to put here, or what contingencies to include — they are still able to explain what and where those things are in the mechanics of a form.

Nick (43:34): I have seen a lot of listing agents push back to say, "Hey, you're on your own as far as figuring out the forms." That's an area where you kind of have to read what the listing agent's temperature is. But they should be able to walk you through those forms, as long as it's you who is dictating what exactly the terms are.

Dave (44:03): And if they're not willing to do that, that's where bringing in a real estate attorney — usually it's less than a thousand bucks to have them help you with the standardized form. Generally they have access to those, or they can draft up something pretty similar.

Dave (44:28): I think, to keep it on issues you're likely to run into — from the people we've talked to who have done this, oftentimes there is a lot of hesitancy from listing agents. And whether that is the cynical view that they're just trying to protect their bottom dollar, or just in general it isn't something that happens with a high degree of frequency — so maybe it's the first time they've ever been approached with this. Real estate as a profession is all about avoiding risk. We're trying to mitigate risk for our clients and make sure that the transaction goes smooth. So if you're a listing agent and you've never seen this, it's like, "This guy's trying to reinvent the wheel on me."

Nick (45:26): A lot of listing agents might say, "Okay, here is the transaction — but if there's no dual agency here and we're doing a non-agency agreement, then I might not even want to walk through the form with you." You've got to keep remembering what it's like from that agent's perspective. They're thinking: well, if I explain this to them, but they think they understand the transaction, and then they think I didn't explain it well enough, and then they're unhappy at the end, or the transaction falls apart — they might come after me. They might come after my license or my errors and omissions insurance.

Nick (46:17): So I think that would be my main takeaway: either a real estate attorney would be the most clear advice, or if not a real estate attorney, maybe another agent who's a friend of yours or someone you really trust who can help advise you on the contract. We can put together something, too, to help on a much more limited capacity and talk through the details of what support you need. And specifically in Washington — if you're in other states, get somebody who's familiar with your state's contract.

Nick (46:49): But we definitely have seen people who have attempted to do this run into issues where it seems like the listing agent just doesn't want to play ball, and they think the juice isn't worth the squeeze, it's going to be a nightmare. So I think we see pushback on that.

Nick (47:19): And then we've also seen where agents will really go hard on trying to capture dual agency. We did go over this a fair bit in the last episode, but that's something to keep in mind as you're entering into this: a lot of agents are salespeople, and they are there to capture as much commission as possible. We don't agree with that, and we think that's unfortunate, but that is a reality in the industry. There are a lot of states that still allow dual agency. And so any time an unrepresented buyer walks through that open house door, the agent starts salivating and they're like, "Here's my next lead."

Nick (48:06): And beyond dual agency, just thinking through practically what it means. So if Dave is selling his million-dollar home and he's hired me as his listing agent to maximize the value for him in the sale, and you walk in as an unrepresented buyer — even if I treat you as a customer, I not only would not, but in the client relationship that I have with Dave, I can't tell you or do anything that would hurt Dave's position. So I can't disclose to you anything about where he's at financially. If you're asking me about contingencies, I can't go through every contingency that's available to you. I can't even recommend that, yeah, you should do an inspection contingency. You as the unrepresented buyer need to be bringing to me what it is that you want, and then I can supply it to you.

Dave (49:09): But as the listing agent, it is my job to protect Dave, not to protect you. You've got to protect yourself. And that's really the mindset that as an unrepresented buyer you need to have. And it gets back to that very first thing of, why would you do it? Well, because you want that control, you want to know that you are protected.

Nick (49:34): This is where it gets into the fear of "you don't know what you don't know."

Dave (49:40): There's so many different scenarios where it can get funky with the listing agent. Also, not to make it all gloom and doom — I've seen it happen a number of times where it's a wonderful transaction, and if anything, it's more efficient across the board. It's more financially efficient, reduces transaction fees. It's more efficient from a communication standpoint, because it's not you having to talk to your agent, who then talks to the listing agent, who then talks to the seller — this long game of telephone. You're reducing the number of parties, communications can be quicker. It can be a great experience on that front.

Dave (50:22): It's not always that way either. And I think this sort of leads into — and maybe we'll start to wrap it here — okay, who should and who should not represent themselves? To some degree it's probably already self-selecting. If you've listened to this point and you're like, "Huh, I could probably handle that, I'm pretty interested" — well, great, you're probably a really good candidate. And others of you are like, "God, that sounds like hell."

Nick (50:51): "I do not want to take on all of that extra responsibility and work." Well, good news — there's some great agents. There's some really bad ones, but there's some great agents, and we would love to work with you. So beyond the self-selecting, any other criteria or caveats that you would add on who should or shouldn't represent themselves?

Dave (51:19): That's hard. I'd say it really depends on what type of home you're buying and what market you're in. Back at the top of the episode, I said if you're in a really competitive market — if this was 2021, it would be hard for us to sit here and be like, "Don't get an agent and you're going to get the house you want." At least in the Minneapolis market, almost every house was getting multiple offers. Unless it was an investor rehab property that you could not move into, if it was in an even semi-desirable area, it was a multiple-offer situation.

Dave (52:03): So once again, stepping out to the larger context: if the market is such that you don't feel comfortable communicating and really instilling confidence in that listing agent, then the answer might be nobody, depending on what the broader context is.

Nick (52:32): And I think we would both say that it's a shame that there isn't — we've talked about what options to try to certify a DIY buyer could be. Some sort of accreditation, a course completion certificate — something that could give a listing agent confidence.

Dave (52:56): So that's at the top: you've got to keep in mind your broader context. And then I mentioned what type of home and where you're buying. If you've maybe rented and saved a ton of money and now you're planning on buying an over-a-million-dollar house, and you've maybe not lived in a house in ten or fifteen years — you don't really know much about houses in general, and you definitely don't know much about luxury houses. You don't understand multiple-zone heating systems. You don't understand the pool. The more complex the property gets, the more risk starts to become involved in terms of what a good agent should be helping you navigate.

Nick (53:45): If you're out in the country and you know nothing about septic systems — there are all these things that are usually contingencies in the contract, and if you don't understand them, or at least have a thirty-thousand-foot view of them, you could really walk into an expensive wall from a monetary standpoint. Or if you're buying a really old historic home, there's certain things. So there are all sorts of categories. But in general, if you're buying a new construction home in a subdivision, or a resale home that's ten years old, you have a very low risk of things that could come up. Never zero — depending on who built the home, maybe the home was built by a shoddy builder. But in general, the older the home gets or the more complicated the home gets, the more potential risks or things to check in the process of buying that you have to do.

Dave (55:11): So, I guess, to make it clear as mud: if you don't have knowledge or feel uncomfortable around navigating those types of things — you're buying a physical property — those people might be disqualified from, or ill-advised to, represent themselves. Who else would you say?

Nick (55:33): I think you've got to have a drive to get educated on the process, which is going to take more time.

Dave (55:43): Piggybacking on that — the more complicated the property is, the more education you're going to need to give yourself. You can learn about septic systems and wells and all of that, but especially in those contingency periods for your inspections, you're on a pretty tight timeline. And so the ideal self-represented person is somebody that is, one, really self-driven — like they're always researching just as it is — and then two, actually has the time, capacity, and flexibility of schedule.

Nick (56:13): This is where maybe you are a surgeon and you could absolutely do it all, but you're on call and in surgery, and you don't want the stress of "okay, I have to go research septic systems, and then call out the septic inspector, and then do whatever other follow-up to get bids on repairs." Like, I just want somebody to handle that for me. Those are the sorts of things where having an agent who's working for you — the trade-off of just what is your time worth relative to handing that off to somebody else.

Dave (56:43): If you have a very tight schedule, and in a lot of cases if you're in a higher-paying career, the relative time and effort to represent yourself — if you had spent that time working in your career or your profession, and it works out to a similar amount as the commission, then it would be hard for you to become as experienced as a good agent and have the eye for all the potential pitfalls. Even with extensive research, it would be really hard for you to get to the same level. So if the money is a similar amount, then it probably doesn't make sense to represent yourself.

Nick (57:43): And then I think, too — this is a subjective one — but when I think about unrepresented buyers who succeed versus those who do not, there is sort of an emotional, like EQ element to it. Even for people who start out the process seeming like the most stoic humans on the face of the earth: home buying, if it's a primary residence especially, tends to be quite an emotional purchase, because it is more than just the dollars and cents. Where we live has huge ramifications for quality of life and how we interact with our loved ones, and there's an identity piece to that.

Nick (58:40): People have different levels of comfort in negotiations. But if you're somebody who's not comfortable with negotiations, who already knows yourself to be kind of up and down emotionally — deals can really fall apart when you're trying to negotiate, let's just say, on an inspection report, and instead of looking at it objectively you start to take things personally. A deal can get off the tracks in a hurry, and that's something that a good agent helps mitigate.

Nick (59:17): Now, a good agent shouldn't ever cause you to overlook real issues, but they can really help massage communications, and they can also really help keep the main things the main things. It's wild how many times as an agent I have seen deals seemingly fall apart over a five hundred dollar issue on a million-dollar purchase. And it's because emotions can get in the way, when it's like — dude, two months of appreciation and you've made up that five hundred well more than that. So having a sense of: all right, what's your emotional EQ and your plan for being able to handle the ups and downs of a real estate transaction?

Dave (1:00:11): And maybe to put the final point on that — what I'd say often is the biggest danger is not having the clarity of mind to negotiate well for yourself, because you are so excited about the prospect of a new house. That's really the biggest pitfall: you look at all these houses, you look and look and look, and you finally find the one that checks all the boxes, and you're like, "My gosh, this is it." And then you get in almost a tunnel vision where it's like, I've got to do everything I can to get this house — and then you don't negotiate well on inspections, and you kind of just get rolled over.

Dave (1:00:48): And back to a couple of years ago, the reality was, to get houses, a lot of deals closed where you had to go tens of thousands of dollars over asking —

Nick (1:00:58): And waive your contingencies.

Dave (1:01:02): So in a certain way you were getting rolled over. But a good agent was still somebody who knew: do we need to go ten over asking, or do we need to go twenty or thirty over asking? And so we're still talking about whole numbers in the tens of thousands of dollars that could be made or lost in negotiation.

Dave (1:01:23): So — clarity of mind. If you really are somebody who struggles to step back, the best advice to an unrepresented buyer is don't rush into anything. Be willing to take a step back, and be willing to have some people outside of the transaction who can speak somewhat objectively into what's happening as you're going through it, who you can bounce things off of. Still as an advisor — and they don't have to be a real estate professional, but somebody who has experience in buying and selling homes. Don't go it alone. Unrepresented doesn't have to mean you're an island.

Nick (1:02:20): So, final point here. Just ask two realtors: can you buy a house without hiring a realtor? And the answer is absolutely.

Dave (1:02:30): I was really hoping you were going to say "it depends."

Nick (1:02:35): No, it is absolutely — buying a home without an agent is a perfectly legitimate way to participate in the housing market. There is nothing that should prevent you from being able to buy. And anybody who tells you that you cannot do it, because you can't get access or that you have to have an agent to buy a home — they're selling you a service. Far be that from us. Now, does it make sense for everybody? No, and that's where it becomes a very personal decision.

Nick (1:03:09): But that's really the whole ethos behind The Tartan Team and what we're trying to do — that services should exist for people who want them. You should choose to hire an agent because you really see the value that that agent brings to the transaction and your particular situation and needs. Not because you feel like "I just have to have an agent if I'm going to get a fair shake at buying a home," or to get access, or whatever it is. So I wanted to really clear up those misconceptions and say that whichever path you choose to go down, there are multiple legitimate ways to participate in the housing market, and we would love to support you whatever that looks like.

Dave (1:03:52): Good stuff, man. Keep educating yourself, keep researching. And even if you do end up hiring an agent, you'll never be disappointed for being more educated as you go through the process.

Nick (1:04:09): A hundred percent. Well, that's probably a good place to land it. We'll be back with another one next week. But before you go — subscribe, like, review. All of those things seriously help with what we're trying to do with just educating home consumers and increasing the standard for what to expect of real estate agents. So if you know somebody who's thinking about buying a home, share this with them. Let us know in the comments if you've got any questions or things that you'd like to see us address in the next one. We'll catch you very soon.

Dave (1:04:45): Bye.