Lyle Womack

The Meaning of the Term Real Estate Agent

A real estate agent is an individual who acts as an intermediary between a buyer and a seller of a real estate transaction. Typically, real estate agents tend to specialize either with buyers as their clients, or as sellers as their clients.

The United States function best mimics the English common law term that means agency, or such that the real estate agent has a fiduciary relationship with the buyer or seller, both in a real estate transaction.

Real estate agents are involved with the promotion of a property, showing of the property to a buyer for the seller, finding properties for buyers, negotiating pricing, and generally keeping the process going toward the culmination of the finalization of the sale.

The real estate agent then receives a commission as a percentage of the transaction, which is usually split between other real estate agents if they are acting for the opposite of the buyer or seller.

A real estate agent must study for, and pass an exam in order to become able to act on the half of a behalf of a buyer or seller in a real estate transaction. The exam is very involved and usually a person must attend formal classes in order to properly be able to cover all of the different facets of the study material. Once the exam is passed, then the individual is able to become licensed as a real estate agent.