Agent Did WHAT?! The Buyer Bought Outside the Box

🧠SCENARIO
An agent had a solid buyer under agreement, or so they thought. They’d been showing homes for a couple weeks, everything in Summerville, typical residential stuff. Buyer signs the agreement, everyone’s happy, agent is putting in the work. Then out of nowhere…buyer goes under contract on a brand new construction home out in Ridgeville with the onsite agent. Agent finds out after the fact and immediately says, “That’s my buyer, they owe me commission.”

Here’s the issue…when we pulled the Buyer Agency Agreement, it was written for residential property in Summerville. No mention of new construction, no broader geographic area, nothing updated when the buyer started looking elsewhere. Now we’ve got a fight, and it’s not as clean as the agent thought it would be.

• Fill out every section with intention, not just to get a signature
• Make sure the scope actually matches how your buyer is shopping
• If they pivot locations, price, or property type, update it immediately
• Do not rely on memory or conversations, rely on written agreement
• Get seller or listing broker compensation handled upfront, not after

• Loose agreements create loose protection
• The problem usually is not the buyer..It is what we failed to lock down on paper