South Carolina requires this site to link the state agency disclosure, and it does — in the footer of every page. What no page here has ever done is explain it. That is the gap this fills.
The form you are handed in the first few minutes decides whether the person showing you houses actually represents you. Most people sign it without reading it, because it arrives before anything feels consequential.
Client or customer — the whole thing turns on this
SC Code § 40-57-30 draws the line at a written agreement:
- A client is a party who has a written agency agreement with a brokerage firm.
- A customeris a person who uses the firm’s services without establishing an agency relationship.
Both get shown the same houses. Both get answers to their questions. Only one of them is represented. If you have ever wondered whose interests the agent at an open house is serving, that is the question the paperwork already answered.
The five relationships the state allows
§ 40-57-350(A) lists exactly five:
- Seller agency
- Buyer agency
- Disclosed dual agency— one firm holding two clients in the same transaction, giving limited services to both
- Designated agency— two clients receiving nearly equivalent treatment through separate designated licensees
- Transaction brokerage— customer service without representing either party
Note what the middle three have in common: a firm can be involved on both sides at once. That is legal here. It is also the arrangement most worth understanding before you are in it.
Dual agency needs your written permission, in advance
§ 40-57-350(I)(1): a brokerage firm may act as a disclosed dual agent only with the prior informed and written consent of all parties. The agreement must be signed, must specify the transaction, and must name the parties. Not a general acknowledgement filed at the start — a specific consent for a specific deal.
And it has a deadline
The statute does not leave the timing to whoever is holding the pen. Under the same section, disclosure must come at the latest before writing an offer if you are a buyer, and before signing the sales contract if you are a seller.
If a dual-agency consent turns up at the closing table, it is late by the statute’s own clock.
What to actually do with this
Ask one question at the first meeting, before you tour anything: am I a client or a customer, and which of the five is this? It takes ten seconds, the answer is required to be given to you anyway, and it is the cheapest piece of due diligence in the entire process.
The rest of what happens between that conversation and the keys is in the closing guide and the buying questions.