Our buyer’s agent offered to list our duplex for rental with the commission paid by tenants. However, it has been 3 weeks after closing but there has been no deal despite activities of showing and open houses. We are seeking advice on how we should handle this situation.

More details:

The rental was not listed until several days prior to closing as our agent indicated that he didn’t want it to span too long, and it was not convenient to show the property as he had to call/text the seller each time. However, our friends who are also buying rental properties said their agent always started renting activities early on and usually had a lease in place at the time of closing. We were contacted by other agents who offered to lease the property, but we turned them all down as we thought our buyer’s agent has the better access and knowledge than others.

To help with getting the property rented, we listed the property at some other places by ourselves and were directly contacted by many potential tenants contacted us. We told our agent that we were doing this and the plan was we would eventually refer the candidates to him. Most often, when we told the candidates that the lease must be done through an agent and commission needs to be paid to the agent, they shied away.

An Exclusive Rental Listing Agreement has been signed for one of the two units, with a term ending in September 30.

We believe that our agent made efforts on protecting us from bad tenants. An example is that a group of people didn’t bring cashier’s check for upfront payment as they agreed, so he didn’t give keys to them and requested cashier’s check. Those people never came back.

The period for graduate school students' rental has been missed given we are at mid-September. We could have better grasped these opportunities as the P&S was signed in mid-July.

Rent has been reduced by $200 during these 3 weeks.

The first mortgage payment of about $3000 is due on Oct 1.

Some thoughts:

We have to do something to prevent further loss. We now are considering trying to make deals by ourselves without involving the agent. The property will be obvious more attractive without additional fee charged to tenants. My husband wants this to be done in a courteous way without irrigating our agent, but we don’t know how.

Are we obligated to pay some gratuities to him for his efforts in renting? If so, what would be an appropriate amount? (He had received over 10 grands commission acting the buyer’s agent though.)

Though there are improvement could be done to the property (install an additional bathroom, update kitchens, add compressor for A/C), given we bought it at a retail price, probably it’s not an option to make these updates and sell it.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!