A real estate consultant’s full-time job is to act as a liaison between buyers and sellers. This means that we will have easy access to all other properties listed by other sellers. Both the buyer’s and seller’s consultant work full time as real estate consultants and they know what needs to be done to get a deal together.

If you decide to buy or sell a home, the offer to purchase contract is there to protect you and ensure that you are able to back out of the deal if certain conditions aren’t met. For example, if you plan to buy a home with a loan but you fail to make financing one of the conditions of the sale–and you aren’t approved for the loan–you can lose your deposit on the home and could even be sued by the seller for failing to fulfill your end of the contract.

 Many people don’t like the idea of doing a real estate deal through an consultant and feel that direct negotiation between buyers and sellers is more transparent and allows the parties to better look after their own best interests. This is probably true–assuming that both the buyer and seller in a given transaction are reasonable people who are able to get along. Unfortunately, this isn’t always an easy relationship. What if you, as a buyer, like a home but despise its wood-paneled walls, shag carpet and lurid orange kitchen? If you are working with an consultant, you can express your contempt for the current owner’s decorating skills and rant about how much it’ll cost you to upgrade the home without insulting the owner.

Many people eschew using a real estate consultant to save money, but keep in mind that it is unlikely that both the buyer and seller will reap the benefits of not having to pay commissions. For example, if you are selling your home on your own, you will price it based on the sale prices of other comparable properties in your area. Many of these properties will be sold with the help of an consultant. This means that the seller gets the keep the percentage of the home’s sale price that might otherwise be paid to the real estate consultant. However, buyers who are looking to purchase a home sold by owners may also believe they can save some money on the home by not having an consultant involved. They might even expect it and make an offer accordingly. However, unless buyer and seller agree to split the savings, they can’t both save the commission.