Working with a
Buyer’s Agent

Your buyer’s agent will protect your interests during the crucial negotiating and closing process. Once an offer is made, you’ll want to make sure you’ve dotted all those i’s and crossed all those t’s. Our team routinely negotiates property sales, so they will be savvy when it comes to bargaining with the seller on the selling price, facilitating the home inspection, negotiating contingencies, and assisting you through the required closing paperwork.

Any agent can set up house tours, but unlike a seller’s agent who represents the seller, a buyer’s agent protects the buyer’s interests during the crucial negotiating and closing process. The agent bargains with the seller on the selling price, facilitates the home inspection, negotiates contingencies, and assists the buyer through the closing paperwork.

Our team of buyer’s agents have a system in place to help you find properties easily & quickly. While looking online is a good option, agents usually have more detailed and full information. As a result of this, we will be helping you look for properties, find new listings, and notify you of price adjustments that match your home search preferences. We will also be providing you with information on sales activity so that you have an idea of what is going on in the market that you’re interested in and set an expectation on how much you may have to pay for a property.

When you work with one of our buyer’s agents to find a list of properties you like, they will also be helping you to book showings, coordinate showing times & access with other seller’s agents, and attending showings and open houses with you so that they can provide their knowledge & feedback when viewing the homes.

There are a lot of people involved in the buying process – it’s more than just the seller, the buyer, and their agents. You’ll also want to make sure you have trusted professionals that include a mortgage broker, inspector, and a legal team. It’s your buyer’s agent’s job to make sure that you have a solid support team and are in touch with the right professionals. What’s more is that a good buyer’s agent can continue to be an on-going source for home professionals once you own the home, and should be able to refer you to contractors, plumbers, and whoever else you need.

Choosing your next neighborhood and the process of starting to search for a home is one of the most fun parts of the home buying process. Your buyer’s agent will be there to make sure that your new neighborhood is the right one for you and will be there to assist you in understanding the things that are most important to you. You will want to tell them what is most important, so that they can help you understand everything from neighborhood schools and their rankings, transportation options, entertainment nearby, demographics, and of course the price that similar homes are selling for. Whatever is important to you!

The role of a buyer’s agent when negotiating the offer is to communicate with the seller and their agent on your behalf to negotiate the best price and terms. In preparing the offer, your agent will provide you with a comparative market analysis for the property that you are interested in so that you can understand what market value and a reasonable price to agree upon would be. The buyer’s agent will be able to pull recent sold properties, active comparables, and expired listings in the area and the city, and will be able to advise you on how the differences in properties affect value so that you can feel confident that you are not overpaying for the property.

Upon analyzing the sales data, your agent will be familiar with the market that you’re looking to buy in and understand market trends so that they can advise you on an offer strategy and original offering price. Once you have the initial offer prepared, your agent will present the offer to the seller and continue to negotiate back and forth until both parties reach an acceptance. In addition to negotiating the price, what is sometimes forgotten is the importance of the buyer’s agent to also negotiate the best terms. Terms in the contracts are matters like completion, possession and adjustment dates and they also play an important role in the offer process.

One of the most important steps to take first when buying a home is to get pre-approved so you know exactly how much you can afford and whether you’ll be comfortable with the mortgage payment. A pre-approval means that the lender has verified your income, credit, and employment. Looking at an online calculator is a good start, but they are not accurate as there are many different factors that a lender and an underwriter look at to determine your affordability – such as credit, salary vs. self-employed, and how long you’ve been at your current position.

Most seller’s agents will insist on knowing whether the buyer is pre-approved at the time of writing an offer, as they’ll want to know that you have the actual means to afford the home you’re purchasing. Our team will be able to offer different mortgage broker options who will be able to get your pre-approval started so that you can start shopping for a home with confidence!

Additionally, the pre-approval process will take into consideration whether you have funds on top of your down payment to pay for closing costs. When you are first planning to purchase, our agents are there to help determine an initial closing cost estimate so that you know exactly what to expect at completion, and thus plan accordingly. Some of these closing costs will likely include lawyer fees, appraisal costs, and inspection costs, to name a few.

When you’re buying a property, especially if you’re a first-time home buyer, you may not know exactly what you want. A buyer’s agent is there to ask the right questions that you may not even think of. A big part of a buyer agent’s role is helping you do your due diligence on the property, specifically during the time of subject removal. This may involve things such as fully investigating the property that might not be visible at the first glance. Buyer’s agents will have seen enough properties to know what is normal, and what’s considered strange. The second step to this will be to assist in appointing a home inspector so that they can provide a thorough inspection of the property that the common eye can’t see.

Your buyer’s agent will be there to carefully inspect the property disclosure statement to determine if there are any red flags. These will be things like water issues in the basement and if the renovations were completed with permits. All of these will be important when making your decision to buy the house. Your buyer’s agent will also be there to find out about the ongoing costs of the property, review the strata documents and identify any red flags, and be there to help you make sure that you don’t buy the wrong house.