North Carolina Land Broker Eric Andrews discusses a common misconception that some buyer’s agents have about agents selling land.
The agent which listed land for sale is probably not going to show a buyer the property unless they are acting as the buyer’s agent as well.
This would never occur with residential housing but is often requested with land sales.
Interviewer: Should you show other agents your own land listings?
Eric: So that is something that’s real, real common. The agents that don’t have any experience in land sales are constantly calling me to show the land to them and their clients. So they want the commission, but they don’t want to do the work. And this sounds really, really mean. Some people would say, well, Eric, your fiduciary responsibility is to the seller. So you do whatever you can to help them. But the agent has an obligation to know the field that they’re in. So, I’m currently the education chair for RLI of the Carolinas. And you have a responsibility, you have a ethical obligation. When you sign your realtor agreement, your code of ethics says, if you’re going to be involved in real estate with a client, you need to know something about that. And if you can’t go out and walk a piece of land and find the corners, and show your client where the land is, then you have no business being out there. And it’s not my job to show you, the other agent, your client, where my land listing is.
I just want to put this in perspective. Okay? First of all, I continuously, in the last year, I’ve had probably around 50 listings. The market’s really, really crazy right now. I only have 20 land listings, but it’s so busy right now. There’s no way that I could take three or four, half days to show and walk 20, 50, or a hundred acres, or 64 acres with you and your client. That is your job. If you want the commission, you got to do the work. Now let’s just say, this is your brother and he’s okay with you not knowing a lot about land. Well, then you go and get a surveyor, and the surveyor will go walk the corners with you, or you get an app, you pay a whopping $59 a year and you get one of these satellite apps or whatever.
But the best way I can put it in perspective to another agent is there’s a lot of agents that get upset with me, and they’re like, oh, well, you’re a land guy. You should be able to do this, but can you imagine any other agent calling a residential agent and saying to them, hey, I have some clients that I’m going to show your house listing to. I want you to come and show the house with us. There’s no way you would do that. It’s a huge inconsideration and it’s also laughable. And why would you? That agent should know everything they could know about that house. And it’s a waste of the other agent’s time. So if you don’t do it in residential, you shouldn’t do it with land either.
