The process of finding and buying your home can sometimes be pleasant.  But it’s, inherently, an adversarial situation. You and the seller are turned towards different goal posts in the game.  The seller is seeking a higher price, and you want a lower one…right?

An agent, in the context of real estate, is a licensed professional who represents one party in the sale/purchase.  An agent must be trustworthy, worthy of representing your interests and not those of your opposing party.  That’s called, at law, fiduciary duty, from the Latin fides, meaning trust.

One of an agent’s fiduciary duties is to find out any information about your opposing party which you can use for your advantage in the inevitable negotiations.  Your buyer agent will educate and train you to make sure you don’t ever reveal to the seller’s agent, the listing broker, anything you shouldn’t – such as, say, the fact that you love this particular property and will consider nothing else.  It’s a hard thing to do, but you should try hard never to reveal any negotiating weakness in looking at real estate.  Remember, homebuying is not a friendly intra-family party, but a serious business negotiation with an adversary, over probably the most important investment of your life.

So, resist the urge to call that ‘friendly’ listing agent, say from the sign out front, to view the property.  Remember, she or he is the seller’s agent, the last person you should be trusting or confiding your needs to.  Call or email a buyer’s agent instead. If you choose us, we’ll represent only your interests.  Let Fred Meyer give you the benefit of his 46 years of experience in residential real estate.

The good news is: there is no charge for having us help and represent you.  By custom, all real estate commissions are paid by the seller. Usually, half is retained by the listing agency and half is paid to the agency working with the buyer. Paradoxically, the seller usually pays the same total amount…whether the agent who worked with the buyer was a seller’s agent seeking a higher price, or a buyer’s agent seeking a lower price. Take advantage of that anomaly.  Let us work for you, free.

You can try us out right now, online.  Sign up for our future email alerts about any new property choices within your specifications.  (You can unsubscribe with one click, at any time.)  We’ll then show you right away, online, what you cannot see without signing up: ten recent closed sales similar to what you’re looking at, for your own comparisons and education. And you’ll find we’re very available to answer all your questions.

Fred Meyer was trained as a real estate appraiser, not just as a broker.  So we’re oriented to giving you all the data you deserve and need to make a well-informed, intelligent purchase. As past president of the Massachusetts Association of Realtors, Fred knows good people all over the state, to help you find the right place at the right price.

In the statistically very unusual event that you become interested in one of our own few listings, we cannot represent you or help you in the same way. (Unlike most real estate agencies, we refuse to practice dual agency, claiming to seek both a higher price and a lower price for the same property at the same time.) In that unlikely event, I’ll work with you for that property only as a seller’s agent. Or you may choose (or we’ll be glad to refer you to) another real estate agency to represent you re that one.