The ONLY thing that seller agents do now are:
1. Get the property in the MLS
2. Hire a photographer to take pictures
3. Create a flyer
4. Put a lockbox on the door
5. Dig a hole in the yard and put up a sign.
Agents RARELY do open houses, or agents only open houses anymore. They basically gave up on actively marketing your house about the time the internet came out. They WANT the listing so that they will get the commission, but put in little work.
Buyers agents have the keys to the lockbox, which is usually necessary to show the home. They also have to spend endless hours driving people around to properties. However, when I bought my last house our agent showed us a handful of houses on day 1, and every house after that we found and told the agent we wanted to see it. My wife found our house online, and that started the process. Buyers agents DO seem to do more work tho, and a lot of real estate agents now claim to be seller specialists because they dont want to put in the work.
The seller agent actually tried to submarine our purchase and came out and said he wanted to buy the house himself. Since I was not “allowed” to talk to the seller, I could not warn him of the dirt his agent was doing to him.
Long way of saying, I could have gotten a better price on the house if the seller did not have to pay so much in commission, and I probably would have closed faster.
And what did your buyer's agent do about this? If you made an offer, then it must go to the seller. Who then decides to accept or not. If the sellers agent also makes an offer then let the seller decide. And generally no one is "allowed" to talk to the seller. I don't see where you were harmed.
“The seller agent actually tried to submarine our purchase and came out and said he wanted to buy the house himself. Since I was not “allowed” to talk to the seller, I could not warn him of the dirt his agent was doing to him.
You could sue him hard for that and report him to the licensing bureau. And if you warn the seller, I would DARE him to sue you. In FACT, you and the seller both could bend him over.
Or, as I call it, the “Pound and Pray” method of real estate sales.
Most are out of their element once they sell a house to a sibling and a cousin or 2.