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Will I owe my buyer's agent a commission if I decide to build?

tl;dr: the question in the title

Hi all - I've been a buyer in North GA since late February. Like many of you, I elected to put my search on hold due to COVID and am now suffering through an extreme seller's market.

Lately I've been running the numbers on building, and it looks like the better option to me. One thing I'm trying to clarify, though, is what kind of commission my broker would be entitled to in a lot purchase+building transaction and who would be on the hook to pay it.

I signed an exclusive buyer brokerage agreement in late Feb that runs for a year. From what I can tell, I'm not able to unilaterally terminate it in GA (could be wrong on this, info is sparse), so my options as I see them are:

  1. Have a transparent conversation with my broker in which I tell her that I've decided to build and ask if she'd still like to represent me in the lot purchase
  2. Have a generic "it's not working out" or "my plans have changed" conversation and ask her to terminate the buyer brokerage agreement as a professional courtesy. Then start from scratch in finding representation for the lot purchase, making sure that whatever I sign pertains to the land only

All else equal, I'd prefer to do (1). The broker has done work on my behalf, and I'd like to at least give her the option of collecting a commission on the lot, even if it's much smaller than she'd envisioned originally. That said, I'm also wary of fine-print somewhere in the BBA/law that would entitle her to commission on the actual home that I build, coming out of my pocket. If that were the case, she'd have huge leverage over me the moment she knows my plans.

So basically what it comes down to is, I don't know the law and I'm afraid to have conversation #1 until I do. I've read the agreement and don't see anything suggesting that either I or the builder would owe her commission, but I also don't see anything that gives me 100% confidence that we wouldn't.

So for the brokers and real estate lawyers and anyone else who knows, how do these kinds of situations work? Does a standard brokerage agreement (again, I'm in Georgia) entitle her to commission beyond the lot purchase? And if so, who pays it?

submitted by /u/-bob-sacamano
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstate/comments/hzpigq/will_i_owe_my_buyers_agent_a_commission_if_i/
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