Occasionally I have an opportunity to act as someone&39;s agent in a real estate transaction. As it happens, I&39;m doing that right now. My clients found a home they like through a friend of the seller. As they were inspecting the home for about the third time, they were introduced to the seller&39;s agent.

Now I can tell you what happened in the listing agent&39;s mind at the moment he met the potential buyers: the Sugar-Plum Fairy began sprinkling thoughts that danced through his head, like, "I&39;m going to double-end this deal and get twice as big a commission check."  This feeling persisted even when they told him at the first meeting that he wasn&39;t going to be their agent.

They felt as if they wanted to have someone in their corner, someone they could trust to represent their interests. They didn&39;t want to worry about whether the agent who represented them both might be representing the seller&39;s interest more than their interest.

They called me because I had successfully represented his business partner and was highly recommended.  We prepared an excellent offer and it was submitted.  My next call was from the seller&39;s agent who indicated that he had FAXed a Counter-Offer to me. He also indicated that he was prepared to pay me a one-half percent referral fee instead of half of the 5% that would be paid by the seller. He intended to keep 4.5% as his share.

He said that I hadn&39;t been the "Procuring Cause," meaning I hadn&39;t found them this property. True enough, but he hadn&39;t found them either; a mutual friend had brought them to the property, not anything he had done.  In fact, this agent had an opportunity to convince them to become his clients too, but they rejected him. They have a right to do business with whomever they want.

Then in the "discussion" that followed, the seller&39;s agent actually told me, "You are stealing my commission." Remember the Sugar-Plum Fairy? He had managed to convince himself that the entire commission was his even though there was evidence – the buyer&39;s rejection – making it clear that he was never going to get all the commission.

What ought to be obvious here was that this agent was putting his own commission ahead of the seller&39;s interest.  I guess my client&39;s intuitive judgment about the agent was on the mark. He was actually outraged because he wants the home and perceived that the seller&39;s agent&39;s latest action was putting his commission ahead of his, the buyer&39;s interest, too.

In reality, a realistic solution would be to acknowledge that neither of us had found the property for the buyer and that the selling commission and price should be reduced by 2.5%, but that&39;s not the way the business works. The seller was obligated to pay a 5% commission, and his agent was there to make sure he got most of it.

The next day the agent&39;s heart was still hardened right up until the point in time when the buyer called the seller – remember that they had been introduced by a mutual friend – and said that he wasn&39;t going to go through with the deal unless the commission thing got worked out. Ten minutes later, it got worked out.

Truthfully, buyers and sellers should not have to get involved in squabbles like this, but they shouldn&39;t happen either. 

My point is that, unfortunately, there are a significant number of real estate agents who don&39;t have any problem putting their own commission ahead of a client&39;s welfare when it is in their interests to do so. That is particularly true when times are a little tough, as they are now. Luckily, the majority don&39;t, but you shouldn&39;t assume anything.

I believe that the greed factor is more at work today than at any time in my memory, and others confirm that. The grim reality of this is that buyers and sellers may just not know what to look for. Someone may be doing this to them in one way or another but they don’t know what warning signs to look for.

All the better reason to find someone you can trust. Get referrals and check references and you will not have to deal with this.