First off, really appreciate BP. I got into real estate about a year ago, and now I’m up to 4 rental properties already. Learned a ton from this community.

I have a question though, especially for other investor-agents here.

I’m an agent myself, and recently another agent I’ve worked with before told me he could send me some off-market opportunities, which is why I agreed to let him send me deals.

But in reality, most of the deals he sends are either:
- already active on MLS under his brokerage
- or properties his brokerage is about to list publicly on MLS

From a relationship standpoint, I feel weird buying something he sent me and then not using him as the buyer's agent. At the same time though, I also don't really feel like I'm getting much actual advantage, because I check MLS constantly already and probably would've seen the listings anyway.

And honestly, on a lot of deals, if I give up the buyer-side commission, the numbers stop working for me.

I even asked him twice whether there was any flexibility on giving me some rebate if I used him, since I’m an agent myself. Both times he basically just ignored that part of the conversation and replied to everything else. 

So my real question is: how would you handle this relationship going forward? Is this type of relationship actually valuable long term?

I don’t want to burn bridges or act unethical, but I also don’t want to feel obligated to give up every buyer-side commission on deals that are basically public anyway.