RE/MAX Alliance

Both the buyer’s agent who represented us, and the seller’s agent for the home we purchased, work at this office. Overall the experience was… fine. I think it is very important in general that anyone dealing with relators have all their decisions pre-​made before talking to a realtor, and I still feel that way. Many of my initial questions in regards to our property remained unanswered all the way until closing, until I finally got the answers myself.
I think it’s pretty clear that even though the word «buyer» is in the term «buyer’s agent,» they are obviously being paid by the seller and it’s in their best interest to keep the prices high. Although the sellers we were dealing with were very resistant, I didn’t feel our agent did the best job at representing our needs. We seemed to constantly be walking this line of, «we should be trying to get you the best deal possible,» to «well we should just give in to whatever the seller wants,» and I don’t really go that way.
I had some issues that were extremely important to me, and many of those ended up not getting fulfilled, and my questions were never answered, nor were the answers facilitated by our agent. I repeatedly asked for answers to some questions regarding HOA documents, and was repeatedly told that I just wasn’t looking in the right place. I asked for the agent to find these answers, which they didn’t. They also clearly didn’t bother to read the documents, because my answers were not contained in the documents. I had to contact the HOA on my own, and do some investigating to get the answer myself. Our agent never bothered to ask me if I got the answers I was looking for; this gave me an enhanced feeling that that just wasn’t important to the agent.
For a first time home buyer, I am glad we had an agent to work with, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say they were working for us. The experience was just frustrating enough that I will probably avoid real estate agents in the future. But on the plus side, we got a great bottle of champagne out of the deal.