In most of the world, a buyer and a seller each bring their own agent. In Israel, it is entirely normal for one agent to hold both sides of the same sale — to have the seller's mandate, show you the apartment, and write the offer you sign.
This is legal, disclosed, and extremely common. It is also the single structural fact that shapes the advice a buyer receives here, and it is worth understanding before you walk into your first viewing.
Dual agency, plainly
An agent representing both sides is called a dual agent. Israeli practice permits it with the knowledge of both parties, and in a market where a single agency often holds most of the stock on a given street, it is frequently the default rather than the exception.
The difficulty is not dishonesty. It is that the two mandates ask for opposite things:
- The seller wants the highest price, the fastest close, and the fewest conditions attached.
- The buyer wants the lowest price, time to check the building, and every protective clause they can get.
One person cannot advocate for both. What they can do is close the gap — and closing the gap is what they are paid for.
The incentive underneath
Almost everyone in a property transaction is paid on completion, as a percentage of the price. That structure has two consequences a buyer feels directly.
The first is that advice against buying is unpaid work. An agent who tells you to walk away from a building has spent their weekends showing you apartments for nothing. That does not make the advice dishonest, but it does mean the honest version is the expensive one to give.
The second is that a percentage fee rises with the price you pay. The amounts are small in relative terms — a 1% commission earns the agent ₪10,000 more on a ₪9M apartment than on an ₪8M one — but they never point downwards.
Whenever someone advises you on a decision, ask what happens to them under each answer. If one answer pays and the other does not, you have not been given advice. You have been given a recommendation.
What this actually costs a buyer
Buyers from abroad feel this more sharply than local buyers, for reasons that have nothing to do with the agents themselves.
You cannot drop by at 8pm to see whether the street is quiet. You have not heard which developer delivered two years late on the last building. You are relying on someone else's description of a neighbourhood, a floor plan, and a timeline — and the person describing them has a mandate from the other side.
The gap is not usually filled with lies. It is filled with omissions: the neighbouring plot with permission for eight storeys, the Tama 38 works about to start next door, the reason the previous sale fell through.
Questions to ask any agent, anywhere
Ask these at the first meeting, before you have seen anything you like. The answers are more useful when nothing is at stake yet.
- Whose mandate do you hold on this property — mine, the seller's, or both? There is one correct behaviour here, and it is a straight answer.
- Who pays you, and does the amount change with the price I pay?
- What are you paid if I don't buy anything at all this year?
- Which properties do you hold exclusively? Exclusivity is not a problem in itself; not knowing about it is.
- What is wrong with this apartment? Every property has something. An agent who cannot name it either does not know the building or will not tell you.
- What happened to the last two buyers who looked at this one?
You are not testing their honesty. You are testing whether their answers are specific. Vagueness under direct questioning is the signal.
How to tell whose side someone is on
Watch what happens when you raise a problem. An agent working for the seller will reframe it — the noise is "lively", the small kitchen is "efficient", the delivery date is "roughly on track". An agent working for you will either confirm it or go and find out.
Then watch what happens when you hesitate. Pressure applied at the moment of doubt is the clearest signal in the entire process of whose deadline is actually being served.
Where we stand
We represent buyers, and only buyers. That is the whole position, and it has one practical consequence worth stating plainly: you pay us nothing. There is no line on your completion statement payable to us, and no amount that moves depending on which residence you choose or what you pay for it.
It also means we are free to give the unpaid advice — to tell you a building is wrong, that a price is high, or that this is not the year. That is not generosity. It is just what is left when nobody is paying you to reach a particular answer.
Ask us the six questions above. Ask them of everyone else too.