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| Whether you are buying a home, selling a home, or doing both at the same time, you deserve a company that is looking out for your best interest — not trying to sit on both sides of the table. |
| For decades, residential real estate has talked about "fiduciary duties" and "client-level representation," while leaving buyers and sellers confused about who works for whom. I first saw that confusion play out in the early 1990s. |
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| A friend of mine from law school asked me to help him navigate the refinancing of his home. During that process, we learned two things: first, that he had paid way too much for his house, and second, that the "buyer" agent really wasn't, legally, his agent. |
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| The "buyer" agent, even though she was from a totally different real estate company than the listing/seller's agent, legally worked for the seller of that home. His "buyer" agent was legally a "sub-agent" for the seller. As such, his "buyer" agent worked FOR the seller of the home and owed ALL fiduciary duties to the seller of the home. |
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| Sound confusing? |
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| It all had something to do with a legal concept known as the "Common Law of Agency." This was covered in a first-year law school class we both took. If my lawyer friend, who took a class on agency, couldn't see, in real time, the negative consequences of agency law, how could the typical consumer? |
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| That is why my wife, Diane, and I founded PRAEDIUM Real Estate Services in 1995. Since the day we opened, PRAEDIUM has been — and remains — metro Pittsburgh's loyal advocate in residential real estate. Everyone should know who works for whom. We NEVER engage in Dual Agency. |
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| A 2019 report from the Consumer Federation of America, "The Agency Mess," put a name on what I had already watched play out in living rooms and at kitchen tables: Dual Agency, Designated Agency, Transactional Brokerage — labels that sound sophisticated and still leave home buyers and sellers wondering whether their agent, let alone the entire agency, is fully on their side. |
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| The cleanest way to express how we operate with our clients is with a law-firm analogy. While PRAEDIUM is not a law firm, the way a law firm handles client intake and management, firm-wide, is still the clearest picture of how we handle loyalty, conflicts, and the keeping of secrets. |
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| In any negotiation, "secrets" are the fuel of the negotiation strategy. If a seller learns the buyer will go $50,000 over the list price or is using the inspection request as a stall while the other house settles… those facts can get used against the buyer. If a buyer learns that the seller is already on the hook to purchase another house, is selling because of an out-of-town move, or is willing to go $100,000 below the list price, that information can be used against the seller. |
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| Price range, timing, and motive are not small talk. They are leverage. How can the same real estate company, that effectively sits on both sides of the same deal, through designated agency, keep that leverage on just one side of the same table? |
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| A careful law firm will not represent opposite parties in the same negotiation — even when both sides are polite, even when both sides want a deal done. A buyer and a seller do not have to hate each other. They only must want different terms. The reason a law firm stays off both sides is simple: what one lawyer in the firm knows, the entire firm is treated as knowing. |
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| Law firms are full of people who regularly talk with one another. It defies logic to pretend they do not. Under the common law of agency there is a formal legal name behind this logic — the "doctrine of imputed knowledge." |
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| Real estate companies are full of people who regularly talk with one another, as well. It defies logic to pretend they do not. |
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| Until the end of 1999, when Pennsylvania's 1998 amendments to the Real Estate Licensing and Registration Act took effect, the law here treated residential real estate companies the same way: what one agent knew, the company was treated as knowing. Those amendments — Act 112 of 1998 — wrote a set of "modern" agency relationships into the statute. Designated agency, one such "modern" creation, arrived at Section 606.5, and it allows a single brokerage to "represent" opposite sides in the same transaction. |
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| Law firms never got that opt-out. PRAEDIUM never took it. We still treat what one agent knows as the company's knowledge. |
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| We take companywide loyalty and confidentiality seriously. To keep both, everyone in the company must be not only on the same page… but on the same side. I cannot see how a real estate company can hold a client's bottom line, inspection worries, or walk-away point in confidence and still fully advocate for the other side of the same deal. How can one agent know secrets without the entire office knowing as well? The duty follows the knowledge. Like a careful law firm, PRAEDIUM will not sit on both sides of the same purchase agreement. We will never represent opposite sides — seller and buyer — in the same transaction. |
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| That duty of loyalty and confidentiality matters when selling, buying, and perhaps most importantly, when you are buying and selling at the same time. In the National Association of REALTORS® 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 65 percent of recent buyers owned the home they moved from, and among repeat buyers, 54 percent put the proceeds of that sale toward the next purchase. |
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| There is no "seller half" and "buyer half" of you. You are ONE client. The sale of this house and the purchase of the next one are usually two halves of the same move. You deserve one company that does not split its loyalty — or its secrets — down the middle. |
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| How that works in practice is spelled out on the Buying and Selling pages. What does not change from one to the other is whose side we are on — YOURS. |
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| Since 1995 we have represented clients across southwestern Pennsylvania — from the 90 neighborhoods of the City of Pittsburgh to the urban, suburban, and rural communities of Allegheny, Armstrong, Butler, Beaver, Lawrence, Somerset, Washington, and Westmoreland counties. Other firms have spent those years trying to work both sides of the table. We have spent them on one side of it. |
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| Again, welcome. Whether you are moving within the area or from across the country, whether this is your first purchase or you are selling and buying at once, I look forward to the chance to give you the undivided loyalty and representation you deserve. |
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| Sincerely, |
| Robert K. (KEVIN) Brown, Jr., JD |
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| Sources: Act 112 of 1998, the Act of November 25, 1998, P.L. 908, No. 112, effective November 25, 1999; designated agency at Section 606.5, 63 P.S. § 455.606e. Buyer and seller figures: National Association of REALTORS®, 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, Exhibits 1-19 and 5-4. |
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