How to choose a buying agent in San Diego

by Sarah Newcomb

A guy called me a while back who was ready to give up on the whole thing.

He'd been working with an agent who told him flat out: I won't show you anything until you're fully pre-approved, and I won't take you to a single house until you sign a contract with me. So he assumed that's just how agents are. Gatekeepers. You jump through the hoops or you don't get to look.

We saw several homes before he ever got pre-approved. Not because pre-approval doesn't matter — it does, and you'll need it before you write an offer — but because he needed to know if buying in his price range even made sense in the areas he wanted. That's a real question. He deserved a real answer before he filled out a loan application. We found him something nice.

I'm telling you that story because most of the advice out there about choosing a buyer's agent skips the part people actually get stuck on: the paperwork you're handed in the first five minutes, and whether you're allowed to say "I'm not ready to commit yet."

You are.

The two agreements, and why people confuse them

Since the rule changes, buyers get handed paperwork earlier in the process, and a lot of people think it means they're locked in on day one. They're not.

A touring agreement is what gets signed before an agent shows you a house. That's it. It's a disclosure. It tells you the person unlocking the door is a buyer's agent, that you could work with them if you want to, and that there are several ways they'd get paid if you did. It is not a commitment to that agent. It's information.

A buyer broker agreement is the real one. That's you saying: I want this agent, exclusively, to have my back through the whole transaction.

That second conversation should not happen the first time you meet someone. Here's the order it should go in:

You talk to the agent.
They walk you through the entire home buying process in California — every step, start to finish, so none of it is a mystery later.
You meet a couple of times. You go look at some houses.
You decide whether you like them. Their personality, how they talk to you, the information they give you, how they work.
Then you sign exclusively.

If an agent flips that order and wants exclusivity before you've seen how they work, that tells you something. Not necessarily that they're bad at their job — but that their priority is locking you down, not earning you.

How your agent actually gets paid

This changed, and nobody explained it well, so people are guessing.

There are three ways it can go, and it depends on the deal:

I negotiate my fee with the sell side.
We write it into the offer as a seller credit.
It's paid directly by the buyer.

Every situation is different. What matters is that your agent tells you which one applies to your deal, in plain English, before you're in escrow wondering. If someone gets cagey when you ask how they're paid, that's your answer about how the rest of the transaction is going to go.

What a good first conversation sounds like

When I sit down with a new buyer, I want to know why they decided to buy. What their background is. What they already understand and what they don't. And then I go over the whole process A to Z, so nothing that shows up in month two is a surprise.

I also want to know who you are. Where you'd want to be. What you do on your days off. How far you're willing to drive. Paint me the picture of the perfect home.

That's not small talk. Everything I do for you for the next several months comes out of that conversation.

If your first meeting with an agent is mostly them talking about themselves and their sales numbers, you learned something.

If you're military or using a VA loan

A few things worth knowing, because I've used my own VA loan and every benefit that came with it:

VA loans can close just as fast as conventional. Whatever you've been told, or whatever a listing agent implies about your offer being weaker, that's not automatic.

If you're PCSing in, your agent should be videoing homes and neighborhoods for you before you ever get here — and they shouldn't wait for you to ask. Zoom calls to walk through the buying process with visuals. Neighborhood breakdowns sent to you at your current duty station so you can narrow the area down before you're standing in it with three days of leave.

Ask what they actually know. Does this agent know the ways the VA has made it possible for veterans to buy, especially in California? Do they know house hacking? Do they know what benefits California gives veterans and what's changing? If the answer is thin, keep looking. There are seven bases in San Diego County and the right neighborhood depends heavily on which one you're reporting to.

The bottom line

There will always be an agent who has done more sales than the one you're talking to. Some of them have been doing this since before I was born. That doesn't make them the right fit for you.

What you're actually choosing is a person who's going to explain a stack of disclosures to you line by line, tell you the truth about a house you've fallen in love with, and run at your pace instead of theirs.

Go with your gut on that.

If you've got questions — about buying here, about VA loans, about PCSing, about selling because you're PCSing, or about buying your first investment property — reach out. I'm always happy to sit down and answer questions with nothing attached to it.

Sarah Newcomb | Dean Aguilar Group 619-321-8393 | sarah@deanaguilargroup.com sarahnewcombreal.estate | @sarahnewcomb_therealtor