What Does a Buyers Agent Do?

A buyer's agent is engaged by the person buying, and works on that side of the transaction rather than the seller's.

REIQ puts it plainly: a buyer's agent represents both owner-occupiers and investors who are looking to buy a property, and unlike sales agents, they do not represent the seller.

Everything else on this page is detail hanging off that one distinction. The selling agent in a transaction is working to get the highest price. A buyer's agent is engaged to work the other way.

Five things, in roughly the order they happen. Not every engagement includes all of them, and the scope is set in the agreement rather than by custom.

Search and shortlist. Finding properties that match a brief, including ones not publicly advertised.

Due diligence. Checking comparable sales, local values, and the things about a specific property that should change the price or the decision.

Negotiation. Dealing with the selling agent, which is a job most buyers do once every several years against someone who does it weekly.

Auction bidding. Turning up and bidding to a plan, which is mostly about not doing the thing everybody does at auctions.

Coordination. Keeping the conveyancer, the broker and the inspector moving to the same dates through to settlement.

This surprises people, and it changes how you check somebody.

There is no buyer's-agent licence class in Queensland. Acting for a buyer sits inside the ordinary real estate agent licence under the Property Occupations Act 2014, so the same licence covers selling a house and acting for someone buying one.

The practical consequence: anyone describing themselves as a buyer's agent in Queensland should hold a real estate agent licence, and you can check it yourself on the Office of Fair Trading register in about a minute. There is no additional credential to look for, because none exists.

It also means the title is a description of who someone is acting for on a given transaction, not a qualification they hold. Two people with identical licences can be doing opposite jobs on the same sale.

We are a licensed Queensland real estate agency, OFT licence 4220395, and that licence does authorise acting for buyers. We can and do represent people in a purchase.

What we will not do is describe ourselves as a buyer's agent, because the word carries a claim we cannot make.

Google's own summary of the category defines a buyer's agent as working exclusively for the buyer. We do not, and the reason is our commercial model rather than our licence.

FAA Property earns a commission from builders and developers when a property purchase proceeds. The strategy session itself costs you nothing. Because we're paid by the supply side, you should weigh our recommendations with that in mind.

That is the whole of it. We are not independent of the supply side, we are not paid by you, and a page that let you assume otherwise would be misleading whatever the licence says.

Two different models, and the honest framing is that they suit different situations rather than one being better.

A buyer's agent paid by you has no financial interest in which property you buy, and charges you accordingly. If you want someone whose only incentive is your side of the deal, that is what you are paying for.

A supply-side model like ours costs you nothing directly, and the trade-off is exactly the one stated above: our stock is our stock. We are useful if new-build investment property in south-east Queensland is what you are after, and the wrong call if you want someone to scour the established market on your behalf.

Ask any agent, us included, two questions: who pays you, and what happens to your fee if I buy nothing. The answers tell you more than any amount of positioning.

The scope is narrower than the marketing usually suggests, and knowing the edges saves disappointment.

They do not give financial or tax advice. Whether you should be buying at all, and what it does to your tax position, sits with a licensed financial adviser and your accountant.

They do not do the conveyancing. A solicitor or conveyancer handles the contract and settlement.

They do not inspect the building. A separate building and pest inspector does that, and it is a different qualification entirely.

They do not manage the property afterwards, unless the same firm also does property management, which is a separate engagement with a separate fee.

Someone offering all of these under one roof is not necessarily doing anything wrong, but it is worth asking who is licensed for which part.