Home Buyers Guide > Disclosure Real Estate Agent Representation

Disclosure Real Estate Agent Representation

Two years ago Dr. Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard University Law Professor, proposed regulation of the financial industry that has evolved into pending legislation creating the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). Dr Warren recently commented that "This agency is not about saving people from themselves or limiting choices. It is about giving people the tools to make good choices." The same can be said of agency disclosure in real estate. If consumers were made aware of all the agency options when buying or selling a home, we trust that they will make the right decision.

The NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS surveys home buyers and sellers annually to gather detailed information about the home buying and selling process. These surveys provide information on demographics, housing characteristics and the experience of consumers in the housing market. Buyers and sellers also share information on the role that real estate professionals play in home sales transactions.

Most buyers sign an agent representation disclosure statement. Repeat buyers were more likely than first time buyers to sign an agent disclosure statement (66 versus 59 percent), and they were more likely to sign the agreement at the first meeting (35 versus 26 percent).

Sixty-two percent of all buyers had either a verbal buyer representative agreement or a written buyer representative agreement with their agent. Repeat buyers were slightly more likely to have a written arrangement than first-time buyers. Eleven percent of buyers did not know if they had a buyer representative arrangement.

Methodology: In July 2009, the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS

mailed an eight page questionnaire to 120,038 consumers who purchased a home between July 2008 and June 2009. The survey yielded 9,138 usable responses with a response rate, after adjusting for undeliverable addresses, of 7.9 percent. Consumer names and addresses were obtained from Experian, a firm that maintains an extensive database of recent home buyers derived from county records. Information about sellers comes from those buyers who also sold a home.,

All information in this Profile is characteristic of the 12-month period ending June 2009, with the exception of income data, which are reported for 2008. In some sections comparisons are also given for results obtained in previous surveys. Not all results are directly comparable due to changes in questionnaire design and sample size. Some results are presented for the four U.S. Census regions: Northeast, Midwest, South and West. The median is the primary statistical measure used throughout this report. Due to rounding and omissions for space, percentage distributions may not add to 100 percent.

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