A real estate agent has loyalty to their customer. If you are the seller’s agent and the buyer says to you, “I’m offering $300,000, but I’ll go to $350,000, the seller’s agent has a responsibility to the seller to tell the seller that. If the buyer has an agent, the buyer’s agent has a responsibility to the buyer. If the buyer says that same thing to the buyer’s agent, that buyer’s agent is responsible for keeping that confidential.
When you have a dual agency, that is, when you have a single agent representing both the buyer and the seller, the rules change, and the agent acts as a conduit. The agent is not on the side of either the buyer or the seller. There is a disclosure form that everyone has to sign, which spells out who represents the seller, and who represents the buyer and whether it is a dual agency.
The Typical dual agency occurs when two agents in the same brokerage firm separately represent the buyer and the seller. The broker is the owner of the brokerage firm, and the agents are the various real estate employees or agents who work for that firm. When you have two agents or the same agent who is representing both the buyer and the seller, that is considered a dual agency.