How to get the most out of working with a buyer's agent

The question I get most often before we sign a client isn’t “are you good at what you do?” It’s “how do I know which buyer’s agent to trust with this much of my money?”

Fair question. A buyer’s agent is paid five figures of your money to make a decision that will sit on your balance sheet for the next decade or two. The person you pick matters more than the property they show you.

In a decade as a Certified Practising Valuer, and now running CHAD with Charissa, I’ve watched investors pick well and pick poorly. Here’s what I’d want to know if I were sitting on your side of the table.

Pick the person before the property

Most people get this backwards. They look at properties first, then go shopping for an agent who can chase the one they liked.

The right order is the opposite. First decide who you trust with the search itself. Then trust them on the property.

A few things worth asking before you sign:

• What’s your professional background? Not “how many properties have you bought,” because anyone can buy. Are they qualified to assess value, or are they running on instinct and sales relationships?
• Will I deal with you, or with someone on your team? Some firms run on a principal-plus-juniors model. Others are founder-led. Know which one you’re signing with.
• What’s your fee structure? Ask whether it’s a flat fee or a percentage of the purchase price, when each part is payable, and how it’s calculated. Whatever the structure, you want to understand exactly what aligns the agent’s incentive with yours before you sign.

A buyer’s agent with a valuation background reads a property differently to one without. You don’t need them to be a valuer to be good. But if they are, you’ve removed a lot of guesswork.

Their job is data. Yours is honesty.

A good buyer’s agent will run the data analysis. You bring the honest brief.

That brief should include:

• Your actual borrowing capacity, not the round-number headline.
• The entity you’re buying in (personal name, company, or SMSF). The search criteria change depending on it.
• Your real risk appetite, not the one you’d put on a financial planner’s questionnaire.
• The deal-breakers you’d walk away over.

The more honest you are at the start, the less time we both waste in the middle.

I’ve seen clients sanitise their brief because they don’t want to look unrealistic. The opposite is true. A vague brief produces a vague search. A specific brief gets you to a specific property faster.

What real interstate due diligence looks like

About 99% of our clients buy in a different state from where they live. Interstate is the default at CHAD, not an add-on.

Real interstate due diligence isn’t a phone call to the local agent and a quick drive-by. It’s:

• Building and pest inspections from inspectors we’ve vetted, not whoever the selling agent recommends.
• Council records, including approvals, restrictions, and planned works on the street.
• Neighbourhood-level risk reads, including flood, fire, school zones, and household-income-to-rent ratios.
• Comparable evidence pulled from recent sales, not what the listing claims.

This is where the valuer’s lens matters most. You’re not just looking at the property. You’re looking at the market context that decides whether the price stacks up.

Negotiation is the deliverable

The fee you pay a buyer’s agent is for outcome, not effort.

Sitting in inspections and forwarding listings isn’t the deliverable. The deliverable is the right property bought at the right price under the right terms.

A good negotiation is data-backed. We come to the table with the comparable evidence, the days-on-market, the vendor’s motivation, and the conditions we want written into the contract. We don’t negotiate on vibe.

The money a competent agent saves you on the purchase price often covers a meaningful share of the fee. That’s the deal. If the agent can’t show you the saving against the asking, they’re not doing their job.

After settlement is not “goodbye”

The formal engagement ends at settlement, when the keys change hands and your property manager takes over. That’s the contract.

In practice, most of our clients stay in touch. Questions come up. Tax depreciation needs an specialist introduction. The broker wants context for the next purchase. The property next door comes on the market and they want a quick read.

We don’t put a clock on that. The relationship continues because the relationship is the point.

One last thing

If you’re shopping for a buyer’s agent, the wrong question is “which one is cheapest?” The right question is “which one would I trust to spend this much of my money on my behalf?”

That answer takes a real conversation, not a website. But the questions above are a reasonable place to start.

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Dan Kwek
Founder, CHAD Property
Certified Practising Valuer