If you’ve shopped for a home or bid on a property lately, you’ve probably noticed something has shifted in real estate. For decades, it was standard practice for the seller — through the listing broker — to pay the commission for the buyer’s agent too. It felt free. It felt normal. Almost nobody questioned it.
I do question it. And after fourteen years of standing on both sides of the auction block and the closing table, I’ve made a deliberate business decision not to offer buyer’s agent compensation on my listings. I want to explain why — not as a marketing angle, but as a matter of principle rooted in something every licensed professional is supposed to take seriously — fiduciary duty.
Start With a Simple Question
Would you ever accept a settlement offer from a lawsuit where the opposing party’s attorney was being paid by your side?
Nobody would agree to that. It doesn’t matter how good the attorney is, how well-intentioned they are, or how many disclosures get signed. The moment your adversary’s counsel is compensated by the person across the table from them, the integrity of the arrangement is compromised. We don’t need a law degree to sense that something is wrong with it — it’s wrong on its face.
Real estate works the same way, whether the industry wants to admit it or not.
The Buyer’s Agent Is Supposed to Work for the Buyer
A buyer’s agent owes a fiduciary duty to the buyer. Loyalty. Full disclosure. Good faith negotiation. Advocacy for the buyer’s best price and best terms — even when that means pushing hard against the seller.
The seller’s agent — in my case, as the auctioneer and listing broker — owes that exact same duty, but to the seller. My job is to get the best price and best terms for the person who hired me. That’s not a conflict. That’s the whole point of representation.
Now ask yourself what happens when the seller’s side is the one writing the check to the buyer’s agent.
Suddenly the person whose job is to advocate against my client is being paid by my client. The buyer’s agent’s paycheck is now tied — directly or indirectly — to the outcome the seller’s side controls. That is precisely the arrangement we’d never tolerate from opposing attorneys, and for the same reason — it introduces a financial incentive that runs against undivided loyalty.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s dressed up as “cooperating compensation,” baked into a commission split, or offered as a courtesy on the listing. The structure is the same. One side is financially beholden, at least in part, to the party it’s supposed to be negotiating against.
Why This Matters Even More at Auction
In a traditional negotiated sale, this conflict is troubling. At auction, it’s magnified.
The entire premise of an auction is genuine price discovery — letting real, motivated buyers compete openly to establish true market value, without artificial floors, steering, or hidden incentives distorting the outcome. When a buyer’s agent’s compensation is subsidized by the seller’s side, you introduce a variable that has nothing to do with what the property is actually worth and everything to do with how commissions are structured behind the scenes.
Did that agent bring their buyer to my auction because it was the best fit for their client — or because the compensation offered was more attractive than at the property down the road? Did that agent negotiate as hard as they could for their buyer, or temper their advocacy because the check was coming from the other side of the transaction? I can’t answer that for other auctioneers or other listings. I can control it for mine.
What I Do Instead
I don’t offer buyer’s agent compensation because I believe fiduciary duty should mean something — not just to me, but to every professional at the table. If a buyer chooses to work with their own agent, that’s entirely their right, and I’ll cooperate with that agent professionally and transparently. But that agent’s compensation is a conversation between the buyer and their own representative, negotiated directly, the same way you’d negotiate with your own attorney.
That keeps incentives clean. It keeps my duty to my seller intact. It keeps the buyer’s agent’s duty to their buyer intact. And it keeps the price discovery at auction honest — which, frankly, is the entire reason someone hires an auctioneer in the first place.
The Bottom Line
You wouldn’t want your attorney paid by the person suing you. You shouldn’t want your real estate representation paid by the person on the other side of your transaction, either. It’s not about who has to write the check. It’s about who that check makes you beholden to.
I built my practice around undivided loyalty — to my sellers, and to the integrity of the process itself. That’s not always the popular position in an industry that’s grown comfortable with the old way of doing things. But it’s the right one.
