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By David deForrest We are planning on moving to the Miami
area very soon with my husband's job. The home we are buying here was straight
from the owner. NO agents involved. I have no Idea how this works so can you
please explain? If we are looking for a home to buy that's on the market and the
seller has agreed to sell through a Realtor and give that Realtor a commission
for the selling of the home why should we give the Realtor a commission also? I
know some Realtors do this. They double their money by getting commission from
both the seller and the buyer! Is that legal? And do all Realtors do that?
At least in this area, real estate commissions are usually
paid by the Seller of a property. A buyer would not normally
expect to be charged a broker's fee for participation in a transaction. We certainly
never have had occasion to do this. This might occur, I
suppose, if you wanted a us to negotiate and contract for the purchase of some
property not listed and where the Seller adamantly refused to accept an offer
through a broker that would result in a commission due. But a case like that
would have to be arranged in advance between the Buyer and the Broker, it
wouldn't fall on you like some kind of evil surprise.
There would be nothing illegal in a Broker being paid for
services by both Buyer and Seller as long as the arrangement
was open and disclosed to both parties, but it is not done around here at
least. They must have some mighty greedy Realtors where you come from or, more
likely, there is some misunderstanding on your part about what goes on back
home. If not, tell me where you're from so I can open a branch (joke).
Anyway, feel free to get the benefit of having an agent assist you with your
purchase, you won't end up paying double in my shop (or any other I have run
across in Miami for that matter).
There are a large and growing number of Brokers who collect nuisance fees from
Buyers (often called transaction fees, administrative fees etc.) This has
become very common although I personally consider this an abuse. Why? One,
because we have already been paid for the work we do in the
form of the fee charged back to Seller or to his agent if listing is with
another firm and secondly, because Buyers are never really informed
about this when they view property with these agents. Anyway, this
will not happen to you at Buy the Beach Realty either.
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