[cj]

> One offer may look good but you know the agent and know they will give you an artifically high offer and then ask for 10's of thousands in remedies.

True, but it also greats a negative incentive. The realtor is obligated to present to high offer to the seller, but not obligated to tell them “this agent usually tries to bump the price down $30k during inspection”. A less than ethical agent can use this to their advantage to get the seller to accept the offer, then convince the seller to accept the lower offer later after they’ve stopped showing the house.

Good realtors like your wife can definitely add value, but there’s no good way to know which realtors are good and which are terrible other than (maybe) references.