Listing Agent vs Buyer's Agent. Which Should You Be?

Should you be a listing agent, or should you be a buyer's agent? How do you go about doing that? 

PROS of Being a Listing Agent

So, let's first talk about the pros of becoming a listing agent. 

When I got into real estate, my goal was to be a rock star listing agent, and there are a few main reasons. One of the first ones is because, as a listing agent, you're the most leveraged. What do I mean by that? The reality is listings take less time to sell.

Meaning it takes less of your time to sell that, which means you will make more per hour when working with listings. Another reason I wanted to be a listing agent was that I didn't want to spend nights and weekends working with buyers. 

Typically, when can buyers see houses? It's going to be nights and weekends. So as a buyers agent, typically, you're going to be working a lot of Saturdays, a lot of Sundays, maybe doing open houses. And for me, I just wanted absolute control of my time. 

So it was infrequent when I was ever working a weekend, and typically I would be home by around 6:00 / 6:30 after maybe going on a listing appointment in the evening. So I had a lot more control of my schedule. 

Another pro of being a listing agent is you can generate leads at a much lower cost, typically speaking, than when working with buyers.

Another pro of being a listing agent is you can generate leads at a very low cost.

To give you a quick example, you can call or prospect sellers, expireds, and for sale by owners, and you can do that at no cost or very low cost. When I started real estate, I had little to no money to invest in leads. 

CONS of Being a Listing Agent

Now let's talk about the cons of being a listing agent. 

The fact of the matter is sellers are much more selective than buyers. The seller will be paying your commission, so when you're going out for a listing appointment, they're genuinely interviewing you for the job as their agent.

Many new agents typically like to work with buyers because they know if they show up and present themselves well, they have a good shot of getting the client, whereas the skillset for taking a listing is a little more advanced. 

However, as a new agent, you can certainly still become a listing agent just like I did. You need to make sure that you're working on your skills and developing them. 

PROS of Being a Buyer's Agent

Now let's talk about some pros of being a buyer's agent. 

Again, the biggest one is that it takes fewer skills to work with buyers. However, a good buyer's agent will have a solid skillset. But a new agent without any skills, being a buyers agent, will typically be a little easier. 

The buyer isn't paying your commission, so they're not going to be as selective. You want to educate them to understand that they don't pay your commission upfront because a new home buyer will not understand that. 

Another pro for being a buyer's agent is once you have the client, the only cost involved is the cost of gas showing homes. When you're a listing agent, you're going to spend money on things like photography, and sometimes you're going to need to pay to have the house measured; in some states, that's a requirement. You're going to need to pay to market the home. 

So if you're starting and don't have any money to invest in the marketing of a listing, then working with buyers will help you a little. 

CONS of Being a Buyer's Agent

Now let's talk about the cons.

It takes a lot more time to work with buyers. Getting them pre-approved; qualifying them to see if they're serious about buying a house is even before the pre-qualification process.

You get a lot of lookie-loos, and it's funny. In the real estate agent community, we call them Pop-Tart agents. A buyer contacts you, hey, I want to see this house, and you pop out and show them. 

So there is a process that you need to follow to make sure that that buyer is ready, willing, and able to purchase a house. I know so many agents that will show 10, 20, 30, even 40 plus houses and find out that that buyer is just looking at homes for entertainment or can't afford the house or qualify for a mortgage.

So, you're going to spend a lot of time early on, if you don't do a good job qualifying with lookie-loos, and even if you are doing a good job qualifying them and you're working with buyers who are ready, willing, and able to purchase a home, it just takes more time.

A listing agent doesn't have to be there for the inspection. The buyer's agent has to be there for the inspection. 

If anything comes up for the listing, say, – you know I had a property one time that had a cracked foundation, it was the buyer's agent's job to go out and find the contractors to get the estimates to repair the cracked foundation.

Once they had all their estimates, I could present those to my client. If that was satisfactory to them based on the prices and bids that came in, we could negotiate repairs from there. So they had to put in a lot of leg work to do all the due diligence. 

You Get to Decide

Ultimately, you get to decide what you want to do as a real estate agent.

Now, of course, you can work with both buyers and sellers. However, you definitely will want to focus on one or the other. 

It was a no-brainer for me because if I could make more per hour as an agent working with listings, why wouldn't I do that? Of course, if you're going to make this a career, you will invest in yourself and become better and build your skill sets.

If you're going to do that anyway, why not do it so that you're working with more sellers instead of buyers? It only made sense to me, which has allowed me to have an excellent quality of life while working as an agent. 

Many agents who work with many buyers work nights and weekends and miss time with their families. As a listing agent, you have more flexibility in your schedule, and you control your schedule. 

So, for me, it ended up being more money per hour working sellers, low-cost leads, and more control over my schedule. 

That's why I ultimately chose to be a listing agent.