“I have to say, the other Realtor we are working with never offers us all this information.” Shel opined.
“Other Realtor?” R.M., looking askance, replied. At Michelle’s curiosity driven request, they had driven north into Riverwest. He was pointing out a few of that area’s condo developments along the way when she’d spotted the coffee shop. They were at the counter, waiting for their order.
“We were out looking the other day at properties listed by Driftwood Realty, with an agent from there.” 
“Let me try and explain something about how real estate works,” offered R.M., as they returned to the car with their drinks. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to sit here awhile ’til this cools a bit before I start driving again.” indicating his steaming cup. “Once burned, twice shy.”
“As in every business,” he began, “there are rules to the game that don’t often seem to make a lot of sense to an outsider. Real estate is no exception. For instance, you can see any property listed in MLS with any MLS agent—it doesn’t have to be with someone from the real estate company that has listed it.”
“So you’re saying that one agent can show us everything, that we don’t have to see each listing with a different agent?
“Yes.”
“Well I’m the customer,” came a rather stiff response from the back seat, “and I can pick and choose who I want.”
“Hear me out,” continued R.M, “and think of it this way. I’ll use an analogy. A guy, let’s call him John, begins looking around online for a condo. He walks into a few places, talks to a few agents. At one open house, he meets an agent who seems to know what he’s talking about. Let’s assume that he has met me! I suggest to John that he preview a certain unit. Using the analogy, think of this as a first date.”
“Some date!”
R.M. smiled, pressing on with his analogy. “John likes the unit but the building doesn’t impress him. I suggest some other developments he could compare—the second date. He finds out that I’m listening to what he likes and doesn’t like, and not pushing him to buy.” R.M registered approving nods from the back seat. They were listening too.
“John says that he appreciates my input, not only about the properties but about current market conditions, and that he’d like to see additional units with me soon. We are now ‘working together’, or ‘going steady’. We both understand, through mutual consent and even though we haven’t signed a contract, that we have some obligation to each other; I will continue to search for available properties and set up showings for John and he’ll view units with me, and only me, with the aim of eventually finding the one on which he wants to make an offer to purchase. John is now what I call a ’serious buyer’ thinking about an offer to purchase. He’s about to make a proposal…”
“I get all this, but what if this agent turns out to be a zero, or doesn’t even show me what I want. Are you saying that I’m not entitled to get somebody else, to use your analogy, to dump him?” quizzed Michelle.
“Yes of course you are but this is where it gets tricky.” R.M. went on. “The next week John drives by a yard sign and drops in to an open house. But then John forgets—he’s not unhappy with me, he just forgets—to tell the agent holding the open house that he has been looking at other units with me, or even to show this agent the business card that I gave him to use when he looked at a unit without me.”
“Wait. No offense, but why wouldn’t you have already shown John this place, if you were so aware of what he wanted? Wouldn’t that mean you weren’t doing a good job for him?”
“That could be true, if John hadn’t told me he had ruled out this development completely, for instance, or that he was looking for a townhouse and didn’t want the type of loft unit available at this development. Going by what he’d already said he wanted, or didn’t want, I would have been equally guilty of wasting his time by showing him this unit.”
“Guess that’s true…”
“This is another reason I offer this tour and try to show buyers as wide a range of choices as possible at the beginning, before they focus their search. So, to go on then, if John changes his mind about that unit style and ultimately goes on to buy that unit, then that open house agent has, what in real estate is termed, “procuring cause”.
“Ew, that doesn’t sound good at all.”
“It’s a legal term. The agent who first introduced John to the property he buys is more often than not entitled to the selling agent commission earned, not me, even though I have been working with John for some time. Even if he tries to go back and fix it, John has gone and dumped me.”
“You’re right, that doesn’t make much sense. Well, it makes sense if I don’t care who gets paid. If I don’t want to work with the “zero” realtor, then I won’t care about him. Why is there that rule?”
“It protects realtors from each other and from buyers who don’t care, as you say. But it doesn’t protect a realtor from his own customer who doesn’t understand the system. Even though I try to explain to customers upfront how it works, they sometimes unwittingly miss the point that they should be consistently working with just one agent. Of course, it is completely up to the buyer to choose that person.”
“Um…you mean once they are ‘engaged’?”
“You see, as a buyer John pays no commission so this outcome will make no difference to him. But I will earn no commission even though I’ve been working in good faith with him. John ends up feeling bad about this; he knows I’ve done a lot of good work for him but at this point there’s nothing to be done about it. ‘Them’s the rules’, quipped R.M., as he pulled out of the parking lot.
“Well, I guess I can see how that would suck for you.” Sheldon concluded. “Working for nothing, as far as you are concerned.”
“If John had shown my business card or even mentioned me at that open house and then gone on to write on that unit…well then of course we’d have been fully engaged, as it were.” R.M. grinned, completing his analogy. “But there is another option open to potential buyers like you, even before you begin to look at units.”
“That avoids these breakups?” teased Michelle.
“You sign a Buyer Agency contract. You authorize me to represent you; otherwise, under Wisconsin law, I represent sellers. I’ll give you a copy to review.”
“Happy ever after?” Michelle teased.
“Well, I always hope that a buyer is going to live happily with the final choice of a unit,” R.M. responded, “and that’s why I never rush the decision. Caveat emptor.”
“Let the buyer beware.” translated Shel.