Hi, we have only recently purchased a property in kelowna so I will try to explain what I know about how it works!
Typically there are two realtor's involved in a sale/purchase of a property, one acts on behalf of the seller and one on the behalf of the purchaser. As a purchaser you do not pay the realtor any money, their fees come from the seller.
We came out to Kelowna in the summer of 2008 for a week, before we arrived we contacted our realtor in Kelowna from the UK. We explained to our realtor that we were only on a recce, because like you we did not want to waste anyone's time, that said she was still more than happy to put together a selection of properties for us to view.
On our return in the summer of 2009 we contacted our realtor again, we had a list a properties that we wanted to view that we had found on MLS plus our realtor added a few more that she thought might be of interest to us. We ended up buying one of the properties from our realtor's selection!
The realtor does so much more for you than just let you into the property, they act as your negotiator and give you advice on solicitors and house insurance. Our realtor also supplied us with a list of all the utilities that we needed to contact.
I strongly recommend using a realtor, it saves you so much time and to be honest I am not sure how you would go about viewing many of the properties if you did not use a realtor. Like I said earlier you as the buyer do not pay for their service at all, so why not use one!!
If you would like the contact details of the realtor we used PM me and I will get back to you.
I hope that this has helped to make things a little clearer!!
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