Choosing a Buyer's Agent for an Old Town Alexandria Condo: Evidence to Ask For

Updated November 2026

You've found the one. Maybe it's a one-bedroom on a quiet block off King Street, maybe a corner unit where you can see the river from the kitchen. And the next decision isn't about the condo at all.

It's about who sits on your side of the table while you buy it.

Almost every agent you meet will say they know Old Town condos. Fair enough. The more useful move is to ask for things you can actually check. This is a checklist for that first conversation: five kinds of evidence, what to ask for, and what a specific answer looks like next to a vague one.

Why a condo changes the agent question

When you buy a condo, you're buying into a building, an association, and a stack of documents along with the unit itself. In our experience, that's exactly where an agent's condo work shows up or doesn't. Can they get your lender what it needs about the building? Can they keep the document deadlines straight? Do they know which questions belong to someone else entirely?

Everything below assumes you've decided to hire a buyer's agent and now you're choosing who.

Buyer-side condo work you can check

Ask for recent transactions where the agent represented the buyer of an Old Town condo. Not listings. Not "our office sold." Buyer side, condo, Old Town.

A specific answer is a short written list. Each line names the building or street, the month and year it closed, the property type, and which side the agent represented. That's checkable. You can ask follow-up questions about any line, and you can ask the references about it too.

Then ask for references: buyer clients from those transactions who've agreed to take a call. Two or three is plenty. When you reach them, skip "were you happy?" and ask something narrower:

• How did the agent handle the condo documents once you were under contract?
• Did the building cause any trouble with your financing, and what did the agent do about it?
• When something went sideways, how fast did you hear back?

A vague answer sounds like "I do a lot of condos" or "Old Town is my backyard." Neither is wrong. Neither is evidence.

One fair caveat. Some past clients won't want their names passed along, and an agent who protects that is doing right by them. The list of buildings and closing months should still be easy to produce.

How they coordinate with your lender on the building

With a condo, your lender is underwriting you and, very often, the building as well. For FHA-insured loans, HUD generally requires the condominium project to meet FHA project-approval (or Single-Unit Approval) requirements before the unit loan can be insured (HUD, FHA Condominiums). For VA-guaranteed loans, federal regulations require VA approval of the condominium project's legal documentation before an individual unit loan can be guaranteed (38 CFR § 36.4360(c)). Conventional lenders commonly collect project information from the association on a questionnaire such as Fannie Mae Form 1076 before they commit (Fannie Mae, Condo Project Questionnaire). Your lender decides whether a building works for your loan. The agent's job is to make sure that question gets asked early, not the week before settlement.

Ask the agent:

• At what point do you raise project eligibility with my lender, before the offer or after?
• Who requests the association's lender questionnaire, and who follows up if the management company is slow?
• If the building turns out not to qualify for my loan type, what does my contract say happens next?

A specific answer walks through order and ownership. Something like: "Before we write an offer, I'll ask your loan officer whether they can lend in that building. Once we're ratified, the questionnaire request goes to management that day, and I'll track it against your financing deadline."

Notice what that answer doesn't do. It doesn't promise the building will qualify. That's the lender's call, and a good agent says so.

If you're financing with a VA loan, our post on competing with a VA loan in Alexandria covers the offer side of that conversation.

Written representation terms, before the first showing

Ask to see the buyer representation agreement before you tour anything. Take it home. Read it at the kitchen table, not in a car outside an open house.

Here's what to find on the page:

• Length and exit. How long the agreement lasts, and how either of you can end it.
• Scope. Whether it's exclusive, and whether it covers every property you might look at or only some.
• Pay. How the agent is paid, how much, and what happens if a seller offers more or less than that amount.
• Same-brokerage sales. What happens if the agent's brokerage also represents the seller of the condo you want. Ask how they handle dual or designated representation, and what you'd be asked to consent to.
• Duties. Which of the agent's duties to you are spelled out in writing.

A specific answer is the document itself, handed over before the first showing, plus an agent who'll walk through every blank and can answer "what if I want to stop working with you?" without flinching. Compensation is negotiable. Written buyer agreements must disclose in conspicuous language that broker commissions are not set by law and are fully negotiable (NAR, Written Buyer Agreements 101) and the agreement should state what you agreed to in plain terms.

If a clause still isn't clear after that walk-through, that's a question for a Virginia real estate attorney. Not for the agent who drafted it.

Who reads which documents

A condo purchase comes with a lot of paper: the association's resale packet, governing documents, budget and minutes, the master insurance summary, an inspection report, a title commitment, your loan disclosures. Somebody has to read each one carefully. Not all of those somebodies are your agent.

So ask the agent to divide it up out loud. A specific answer sounds like a clear split of responsibility, roughly like this:

What's actually inside a resale packet, and how to read the fees and reserves, is in our condo fees and resale packets post. Insurance questions get sharper near the water, too; our Old Town waterfront flood zones post lays out the map side before you call an insurance professional.

The vague answer here is "Don't worry, I'll go through everything with you." Kind. Probably sincere. But it doesn't tell you who's accountable when a clause in the bylaws really matters.

Communication, and knowing when to hand off

The last piece of evidence is how they'll work with you day to day, and how they'll get you to the right professional when a question isn't theirs to answer.

Ask:

• How will you reach me during a contract, and how quickly do you usually reply?
• Who covers for you when you're unavailable, and will I meet them before I need them?
• When a question is legal, financial, or about insurance, what do you do with it?
• Are any of the professionals you'd suggest affiliated with your brokerage, and will you tell me that in writing?

A specific answer names a channel and a habit. "Text for anything time-sensitive, email for documents, and I'll confirm every contract deadline in writing the day we're ratified." For the hand-off question, listen for something plain: "That's one for your attorney," or "Ask your lender, and copy me so I can track it."

Ask the agent how they'll connect you directly with your attorney, lender, or insurance professional when a question falls within that person's role. A good agent can usually suggest more than one lender, attorney, inspector, or insurance agent, tells you about any affiliation, and is perfectly comfortable with you choosing your own.

Ask us the same questions

Fair's fair. If you're interviewing The LizLuke Team, ask us for every item on this list.

Here's what we can tell you up front. Elizabeth founded The LizLuke Team and holds the CRS, SRS, GRI, and SRES designations. She's licensed in Virginia and Washington, D.C., and you can confirm any Virginia agent's license through the public license lookup at Virginia's Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation. We work the whole market, small condos through the high end. Most of our business comes from referrals and repeat clients, and you can read what past clients have written on our testimonials page.

For the condo-specific evidence, ask us directly. Request a written list of our recent buyer-side Old Town condo transactions, a copy of the buyer agreement we'd ask you to sign, and how we'd split document responsibilities on your purchase. Ask to speak with past buyers who've agreed to take a call. Then hold our answers up against everyone else's.

That's the whole point of a checklist.

Talk it through with us

Elizabeth Lucchesi and The LizLuke Team work out of the LONG & FOSTER REAL ESTATE INC office on North Royal Street in Old Town. If you'd like to sit down with this list and ask us every question on it, meet the team here. It all starts with a conversation.

Sources

• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, FHA Condominiums (condominium project approval and Single-Unit Approval).
• 38 CFR § 36.4360(c), Condominium loans—general (VA approval of project legal documentation before individual unit loan guaranty).
• Fannie Mae, Condo, Co-Op, and PUD Eligibility (Condo Project Questionnaire Forms 1076/1077).
• National Association of REALTORS®, Written Buyer Agreements 101 (broker commissions are not set by law and are fully negotiable).

This is general information and is not legal or tax advice.

The LizLuke Team at LONG & FOSTER REAL ESTATE INC. 110 N Royal St, Ste 300,
Alexandria, VA 22314. Office 703.683.0400. The LizLuke Team (703) 868-5676. Virginia License #0225069250.

Equal Housing Opportunity.

All information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.