How Do You Know Your Buyers' Agent Is Truly Acting in Your Best Interests?
In the fast-paced world of property, having an expert on your side is crucial. A Buyers' Agent is engaged to represent you, the buyer, giving you a competitive edge. But how do you ensure the person you trust with one of your biggest financial decisions is operating with integrity and solely focused on your success?
Choosing the right agent means looking beyond the glossy marketing and asking the tough questions. It's about finding a dedicated partner, not just a transaction facilitator. Let's look at the key indicators of a buyers' agent who puts your interests first.
Volume vs. Value: A True Market Leader's Focus
One of the first things people notice about a buyers' agent is their transaction volume. High volume is often equated with being a "market leader," but the reality can be more complex.
The Volume Trap: In a volume-focused model, the priority can shift towards rapid client turnover. This may lead to an agent rushing a purchase, potentially by encouraging a client to pay the vendor's asking price or close to it, just to move on to the next deal. The focus is on speed of transaction, not price saved or suitability of the home.
The Value Approach: A truly client-focused agent prioritises negotiating the best terms and price for you. They understand that securing a property below its market ceiling—or even advising you to walk away—is the real measure of success. While they may not boast the highest number of buys, their clients generally secure better-suited properties and terms.
Understanding Your Unique Lifestyle and Goals
A genuine expert’s market leadership is also measured by the depth of their understanding of you.
It is essential that your agent shows an active interest in how you plan to live in the property or what you intend to do with it if it's for investment purposes. A great buyers' agent goes far beyond simply knowing your budget and the number of bedrooms you need. They should seek to understand:
Your Lifestyle and Needs: Do you need space for a growing family, a dedicated home office, or simply a low-maintenance bolt-hole? They should identify homes that genuinely meet your daily habits and long-term needs, not just properties that look good on paper.
Alignment of Focus: Does their advice align with your core goals? If your primary focus is finding a home that suits your family, yet the agent only discusses speculative capital growth or convenient public transport options (when you drive everywhere), their focus may be misaligned with yours.
The Agent Who Helps You Walk Away: The Ultimate Test of Integrity
How your buyers' agent guides you through property selection is a major clue to their intentions. Do they constantly push you toward making an offer, or do they help you maintain discipline?
A high-quality buyers' agent is your filter and voice of reason. They should:
Help you walk away: An agent acting in your best interest will highlight the risks such as structural issues found in due diligence, over-inflated prices, or a critical mismatch with your core needs/wants and advise you to withdraw or move on. This is a sign of ethical service, even though it costs them time and delays their commission.
Be a critical assessor: They should scrutinise a property based on their independent research and your unique requirements.
The Savings Mindset: Your Agent as a Fiduciary
Your agent has a fiduciary duty to act in your best financial interest. For a buyers' agent, this means working towards saving you money whenever possible and securing the best possible terms for the purchase.
Independent Valuation: If your agent treats the guide price as the sole indicator of value, they are not maximising your financial position. A truly professional agent will place a value on the home through their own research, knowledge and due diligence, independent of the sales agent's guide.
Strategic Negotiation: Do they utilise settlement terms or other similar tactics to try to save money on an offer or strengthen your position? Do they advise you on how a minor defects could be used to renegotiate the price?
A truly great agent understands that their fee is a worthy investment because it is significantly offset by the savings and value they deliver.
Availability and Focus: Are You One of Many, or a Priority?
Finding the perfect home requires deep focus and availability. Consider the time commitment involved for a buyers' agent to service a single client effectively:
Property Search & Vetting: Researching on-market and off-market listings, attending inspections, and preparing detailed property reports for a single client can easily consume one full day a week or more.
Administration & Marketing: Agents also spend considerable time on business administration, social media, marketing and prospecting for new clients.
Given this workload, an agent who takes on too many clients (say, significantly more than 3-5 active clients at a time) simply cannot provide the depth of research, speed of response and dedicated focus you need to succeed in a competitive market. Ask them directly: How many active buying clients are you currently working with?
The "Conflicting Briefs" Red Flag
This is arguably the most critical question to ask: Do you have any other clients with a similar property brief to mine?
If your agent is working with multiple clients seeking the same type of property in the same suburb at the same price point, you have an immediate conflict of interest.
The Problem: Whose interest will they prioritise when a rare, off-market opportunity arises? This scenario compromises their fiduciary duty to you.
Ethical Standard: An agent committed to genuine advocacy should only represent you exclusively for your desired property type in your target area. If they have a conflicting brief, they should disclose it immediately and offer to refer one of the clients elsewhere. No conflicting briefs is the gold standard for undivided loyalty.
How Did You Find Your Agent? Understanding Referral Fees
It's an industry standard (and not always well-known) that referral fees exist across the real estate landscape, often paid by buyers' agents to real estate agents (and other professionals in some cases) for referring clients.
This practice isn't an immediate red flag, but transparency is non-negotiable.
The Legal Obligation: Your buyers' agent has a legal obligation to disclose any referral fee they are paying to the person who brought you in. If they are hiding it from you, that is a serious red flag.
What to look for: Referral fees are acceptable if they are nothing more than a legitimate business cost for client acquisition. They become a problem if they are hidden, or if they create an expectation that you will then buy from that agent, or if your fees are increased to cover the cost. They should be able to explain what the fee is and what it involves. An ethical agent will be able to confirm it does not affect the service or cost to you.
Your Search Deserves a True Advocate
Choosing a buyers' agent should be a decision based on trust, commitment and proven client focus, not just volume metrics.
At Ralph & Ralph, we are local, honest, and operate with a deep commitment to integrity. We understand the market deeply because we operate with a strict quality-over-quantity model. We only take on a select number of clients at any given time because we believe your success deserves our undivided attention. We won't waste your time or money. We only commit to helping clients when we know we can genuinely add value and secure the right property for them.
We are so confident in our ability to represent you that we are open to discussing fee models that align our focus directly with saving you money.
Ready to partner with an agent whose success is measured by your savings and long-term happiness?
Contact Ralph & Ralph for a confidential chat about your property goals today!