My Company Gave Me a Relocation Company to Help With My Move. Do I Have to Use Them? (Part 1)

If you're relocating for a new job, there's a good chance your employer has offered you a "relo" service to make the move easier. New job, house full of kids and pets, boxes everywhere. A service promising to handle the logistics sounds like a gift!

We've worked alongside these companies many times, and recently had an experience with longtime family friends that was challenging enough that we thought it was worth writing down — both as a lesson learned for us and as a resource for future clients who get offered this same service.

This is Part 1: the questions we think every seller should ask before signing on. In Part 2, we walk through exactly what happened with our friends' sale.

FAQs: 

Who is actually the client of the relocation company?

The employer, not the employee. The relocation company's job is to help the employer get the employee settled quickly so they can focus on their new role, not necessarily to represent their best interests as a seller.

Does the relocation company have a fiduciary duty to the seller?

Usually not. This is worth asking directly. Your home is likely your largest single asset. If the party managing that sale doesn't owe you fiduciary duty, you deserve clear answers about how the process will actually be run.

Will the relocation company control who your agent can talk to?

Ask this one too. We've had a relocation company insist that we communicate only with them, even though our fiduciary duty was to the seller, not to the relo company. We worked around it; our fiduciary responsibility isn't negotiable. Neither should yours be.

Do relocation companies recruit the best agents in the market?

Not typically. Relocation companies take up to 41% of the professional fee an agent earns. In a strong year, top agents in a given market often run around 50% margins; in a slow year, that can drop to 25–30%. So ask yourself: if an agent is willing to accept a 41% cut of their fee in a market where they'd otherwise be profitable at 60%, is that the agent with the fullest schedule and the most in-demand skill set — or the one who needs the work?

Will the relocation company connect you with the expert in your specific neighborhood?

Not likely, even if that expert already knows you. In the situation that prompted this piece, our clients already knew us (and the relocation company still asked for 41% of our fee). The best agents in an area generally can't absorb that kind of business, even for people they'd want to help. 

Will the relocation company cover the buyer's agent fee at the local market rate?

Check this carefully. In Austin in 2026, over 90% of contracts have the seller compensating the buyer's agent. Some sellers have been surprised to learn, late in the process, that their relocation company wasn't willing to pay the going local rate — leaving the seller to make up the difference (often around 1% of the sales price) out of pocket to keep the deal competitive.

Will the relocation company respond as quickly as your local market expects?

Every market has its own tempo. In Austin, when a listing is new to market, well-prepared, and well-priced, quick communication is essential to managing the cadence of the transaction. Ideally, buyers should feel some pressure to make a compelling offer, and the reward for that offer is securing the property quickly. If your relocation company has a policy of replying within 5 days, your agent may struggle to keep your most active buyers engaged.

Will there be extra paperwork beyond the standard state contract?

Almost certainly. In Texas, agents can only advise on the state's promulgated contract forms. Anything a relocation company adds outside of that requires the buyer to bring in an attorney just to understand it. That's atypical for our market, and it adds friction: extra paperwork means extra hesitation, and hesitation from a buyer's side costs sellers goodwill. A predictable process for buyers ultimately gets sellers better results

Will you be able to price your home where you want to price it?

Not always. In our experience, the relocation company polled multiple agents during the listing interview, averaged their price opinions, and used that average as a hard ceiling for the list price — regardless of whether the property had upside a well-run process (including off-market marketing) might capture.

Does using a relocation company actually save you money?

This is the question that matters most, and it deserves real scrutiny. In our case, the relocation company told our sellers they were providing 7% in total benefit. When we dug into the specifics: the fine print on what was actually covered, the fee structure, and how the process itself played out, we came to a very different number. We saw the benefit for our clients as 1.8%, but the relo company's slow response time soured the transaction and arguably cost our sellers 3.7% in net proceeds.

We'll walk through that math, and what it cost our sellers on the other side of the ledger, in Part 2.

Part 2: what actually happened when we helped a longtime family friend sell their home through a relocation company — including the pricing squeeze, the inspection that almost went undisclosed, and the full-price offer that walked away.