Most people choose an agent from a sign, a mailer or a relative. Then they hand that person the largest financial decision of their life. We match Utah sellers and buyers with licensed agents, and we tell you what to ask before you sign anything.
Price, preparation, timing and how the offer is negotiated are where an agent earns the engagement. Everything else is marketing.
Five situations that cover almost every call: listing, buying, pricing, getting a home ready, and moving here from somewhere else.
A listing is a market. You are asking buyers to bid against each other, which means price, condition, photography and timing all have to be right at the same time.
Learn more →The agent on the listing sign works for the seller. Buyer representation is how you get someone reading the contract in your interest instead.
Learn more →Anyone can hand you a number. The useful thing is the reasoning underneath it and whether the comparable sales they chose actually resemble your home.
Learn more →Cleaning, clearing and fixing what a buyer will notice in the first two minutes usually matters more than any project. Big renovations rarely return what they cost on the way out.
Learn more →A remote transaction fails on logistics, not on price. The question to ask is who will physically be at the house when something needs a person there.
Learn more →Three steps, and none of them commit you to anything.
Selling, buying, or both, plus where the home is and roughly when you need to move. Timing changes which agent is the right fit more than most people expect.
Not the whole valley. The specific market your home sits in, or the one you are buying into.
We send you what to ask. You sign with the one who answers well, or you tell us none of them fit and we keep going.
Putting a home in the MLS takes about twenty minutes. If that were the job, the job would not exist. The work that moves a listing sits before and after that entry, and because most of it happens where the seller cannot see it, it is also the work that quietly does not get done.
Before the listing goes live: walking the house and telling you which pre-list work will come back and which will not, building the pricing case out of closed sales rather than active ones, deciding the listing date against what else is coming to market, ordering photography that is scheduled for the light rather than the calendar, and writing copy that answers the questions a buyer agent will otherwise have to call about. After it goes live: reading showing feedback for patterns instead of forwarding it, knowing which agents brought buyers and following up with them by name, and holding a pricing conversation with you at the point the market has told you something rather than at the point you are frustrated.
Then the part that decides the number on the settlement statement — negotiating the offer, and negotiating again after the inspection, when the buyer comes back asking for a credit. You can tell whether this work is happening. Ask for the comparable sales in writing. Ask for the marketing plan in writing before you sign, not after. Ask what the showing feedback has said so far and what they concluded from it. An agent doing the work has answers ready; an agent who is not will talk about their brand.
For a long time a buyer could tour homes for weeks without ever discussing what their agent did or how that agent got paid. The compensation was arranged on the listing side and buyers largely never saw it. That is no longer how it works. A buyer now signs a written agreement with their agent before touring, and that agreement states what the agent will do and what their compensation is.
The practical effect is that it became a negotiation instead of an assumption. Whether the seller contributes anything toward the buyer agent, and how much, is discussed and written down rather than presumed. It can still happen, and often does. It is simply no longer automatic, which means it belongs in the conversation before you write an offer instead of surfacing at closing.
So the first meeting with a buyer agent should now cover three things plainly: what they do for you, what their compensation is, and what happens if a particular seller contributes less than that or nothing at all. Ask how they intend to handle that gap and get the answer before you fall in love with a house. Ask how long the agreement runs and how you end it if it is not working. An agent who is comfortable with the new arrangement will walk you through all of it without being pushed; one who gets vague about the money is the wrong agent regardless of how good the tour was.
Salt Lake, Utah, Davis and Weber counties.
Nothing. We are a referral service. You are matched with a licensed Utah real estate agent at no cost to you, and any compensation is negotiated directly between you and that agent or their brokerage as part of the agreement you sign with them. We are not a brokerage and we do not represent anyone in a transaction.
It is negotiated between a client and their agent or brokerage, and it is a term of the representation agreement rather than a fixed rate. It is a fair thing to raise before you sign, on either the listing side or the buying side, and an agent who cannot discuss it plainly is telling you something. We are not part of that negotiation and we do not set or quote it.
Yes. A written buyer agreement now comes before touring, and it states what the agent does, how long the agreement runs and what their compensation is. Read the term and how you exit it. Also ask what happens if a particular seller contributes less toward your agent than the agreement calls for, because that is negotiated on each transaction now rather than assumed.
Get a walkthrough before you spend anything. Cleaning, clearing and fixing what reads as deferred maintenance almost always pays. Large renovations undertaken specifically to sell usually do not. If you want a fast as-is sale rather than a listing, that is a different route entirely and our sister sites cover it — this site is for putting a home on the market and letting buyers compete for it.
Judge them yourself, and interview more than one. Ask how many homes they closed in your specific area in the last year. Ask to see the closed comparable sales behind their price, individually. Ask for the marketing plan in writing before you sign, and ask what they will tell you about your house that you will not want to hear. If the answers are thin, tell us and we will keep looking.
Tell us where the home is and what the timing looks like. We will match you and send you the questions to ask.
Get Matched With an AgentEarly questions are fine. Most people talk to us months before they list.