Signing Exclusivity Agreement with Realtor

[Mark Miles]

Hey, I just started working with a new buyer's agent who's asking me to sign an exclusivity agreement. I understand it from an agent's perspective - they don't want to waste time showing properties to a buyer, only to have them potentially use another agent (or use no agent at all) when making offers.

But I've been burnt in the past when signing an exclusive agreement with a buyer's agent:

1) Once before I signed this type of agreement and then the agent became very unresponsive (clearly they had other higher value clients). This screwed me over bc I was stuck using an agent who was unresponsive and who wasn't performing

2) Another time, I signed an agreement that committed me to use a particular agent ONLY for properties that they showed to me. The problem is that the agent refused to submit one of my lowball offers which then left me screwed bc I couldn't work with another agent and I couldn't submit an offer on my own (per the agreement I had signed with the buyer's agent).

Thus, bc of these bad past experiences, I'm really not wanting to sign an agreement with an agent. If they perform well, I'd love to use them to make offers, but I don't want to be tied in if they get busy with other clients and become unresponsive (which happens a lot in this industry). I'm curious to get responses from other investors (and also from some agents) on whether you sign an exclusivity agreement with a buyer's agent that you're actively working with?