[Porsche-O-Phile]

"Dual agency" relationships are a joke. Frankly they ought to be illegal, IMHO. There is simply NO WAY that one individual can act in both the seller's AND buyer's best interests. No way. I've always had a fundamental problem with these arrangements and would question the integrity of any agent who even suggested acting as one. Agents in general aren't to be trusted. "Dual agents" are ABSOLUTELY not to be trusted.

That said, what I've been told (and what makes the most sense to me conceptually) is to find an individual who is willing to contract with you exclusively as a "buyer's agent" ONLY. At least it eliminates the conflict of interests. Even then, I think the old adage "trust but verify" comes into play, since a lot of these guys know each other and I wouldn't doubt for a minute that some don't collude behind the scenes to get a deal done, while screwing the buyer to the maximum extent possible in order to pad their commissions and make their boat payments. Illegal? Yes. But I've no doubt whatsoever that it happens. But in most cases the conventional arrangements are probably legit (but if it smells fishy...)

Best still, I'd look for FSBO deals (and I am). I'm finding more and more good ones out there. Realtors are perhaps the most overpaid individuals in the world relative to the value of the service they provide, IMHO. One stands to lose very little by avoiding dealing with them and can stand to save an awful lot of "deadweight" back-end money wasted, IMHO. I liken them to travel agents from years ago - they only exist as a convenience and really their only value is in their ability to access their respective mystical databases (for travel agents, it was the airlines' fare and schedule database, for realtors its the MLS). In the case of travel agents, they ended up going the way of the dodo once the public-at-large started to be able to access fares & schedules directly / online (a consequence of the advent of the Internet) and no longer needed the overpaid middlemen to do it. I'm seriously hoping that the realtor-based real estate system goes the same way for the good of everyone - and the evidence I'm seeing is that it is in fact starting to go that way, albeit slowly - I suspect it will take much longer to finally fade into the pages of history, probably on the order of 10-20 years. Anyway, there are lots of FSBO listings these days with more coming online every day. But I digress...

Unfortunately in today's market, most good deal homes are bank-owned and banks DO play the game with realtors rather than opting to list "FSBO". The FSBO deals are usually people in trouble looking to dump just before going into foreclosure (at least that's what I'm seeing), so they're out there but the ones that REALLY have the good prices are the ones that the bank has already repossessed and are now looking to unload.

I'd avoid short sales too - at least for right now. I have several friends who have had offers accepted on short sale properties and the banks are all hemming and hawing right now, not approving the (seller accepted) offers because they all want to see if they're going to get federal $$$ to shore up higher, above-market-value prices rather than cutting their losses and letting places go for what the market will bear right now. Stupid and short-sighted (and sleazy), but that's banks for you.