There is nothing wrong with you approaching sellers agent.

Be direct. I have no buyer agent I want to have 5% discount on the lot. Draw offer. Seller agent may require you to sign consent form that you are aware of them representing the seller on the transaction.

In most states purchase contract is standard form. However think of contingencies:
- subject to you obtain financing
- subject to property permitting septic system
- subject to environmental, ....

Who pays title fee: seller, 50/50, none .

Thanks for the feedback. Definitely agree with your approach. Would it be standard practice for the sellers agent to:

A) collect the entire 6% if they represent both sides or

B) collector only their 3% and seller retains the rest of the commission as profit

Great lot!

Standard practice is A, although different listing agreements may vary and agents sometime do reduce their commission to get a sale under certain circumstances.

Do you have access to the prices the other lots sold and other nearby comps? Have the previous sales in the subdivision been at full list? How long that's it been on the market? Is there any indication of financial distress? A 95% offer is only a good deal for you if the lots are priced well to begin with. If you have sufficient information to make that call then you might be ok, but if you don't, having your own agent dig into the recent sales can benefit.

Having just been through this situation, we used our own agent who we have been working with for a while even though we had no contractual obligation to do so and we are comfortable in the negotiation and contract process. The recent sales showed no advantage to going directly to the listing agent. Some previous buyers used their own agent while others had their own agent and there didn't seem to be a correlation.

Also in a development the incentive is to obtain the maximum for ALL the lots and in a reasonable sell-out period. In fact, the listing agent was actively courting other realtors to bring bring clients. It would have been counterproductive in the long run to play favorites with buyers coming directly to him. Moreover, the developer doesn't have an incentive to taint the comps and your sale would be the newest comp. To preserve the value of the remaining inventory, the developer would rather see a higher comp like 100% of list rather than 97% even if he would still pocket the same amount.

YMMV, but just some food for thought. Good luck!

It probably depends on the listing contract the seller signed with their listing agent. When we sold our previous house, I think our contract with the listing agent specifically said that in the event that if there's no buyer's agent, the seller's agent will get the full amount of commission.

Fortunately, I know exactly what the other adjacent lots sold for and how the negotiation process went, so that gives us a little advantage.

I'm thinking we are going to go in without a buyers agent. If nothing else, it will make the sellers agent even more eager to get a deal put together with us (possibly convincing the seller to take a lower offer) because she'll make twice as much than future buyers down the road with an agent.

If we can negotiate 10% off, we can pay cash which should be enticing as well.....

Great news! After several days of back and forth offers, we came to a final price and an accepted offer. Let the planning begin!

Wonderful. Great lot and keep posting plans, preliminary plans, whatever. Be sure you read the subdivisions arch design guidelines carefully and give them some real thought. While ours are very detailed and lengthy, as well as being a bit restrictive, I actually found them enormously helpful so far in the design phase.

Now the fun part begins! Enjoy the process.

You should not be concerned about the sellers fee to the agents involved unless the seller agrees to lower the asking price by half of the realtor fee which might not be allowed in their contract with the selling broker.

Usually, it costs you nothing to have a broker representing you in the transaction.