Catherine Goode DeVellis owns her own company in Jamestown — Rhode Island Real Estate Buyer Agency.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

Like many of her colleagues in the business, broker Catherine Goode DeVellis is a people person — sunny, friendly and outgoing.

Her clients say she is also smart, savvy and hardworking, and they have recommended her to members of their family, friends and coworkers. And DeVellis says many of her clients become her friends.

But there is one thing DeVellis refuses to do for her clients. She will not sell their house.

DeVellis is one of Rhode Island’s tiny cadre of exclusive buyer agents — people who work only with buyers at agencies that do not accept listings of properties for sale.

There are only four “EBAs” in the state, at two agencies: DeVellis owns her own agency in Jamestown — Rhode Island Real Estate Buyer Agency, and in Lincoln, a husband, wife, and son team, John, Kathleen and Mark Corbett, operate a buyers’ agency — The Buyers Choice.

Along with refusing listings, this small group also refuses all the money that goes along with that side of the business.

But according to these agents, and the buyers who hire them, it is this independence — completely untainted by any fealty to sellers — that makes their services so valuable.

DeVellis, who has been an EBA for about seven years, said her only mission is to find a client the right house at the right price.

“I stay on my side of the playground,” she said. “I don’t have any conflicts, ever.”

Jeanne Daniels is a Rhode Island native who is moving back home after living in New Mexico for close to 11 years. She and her husband, Al Daniels, are closing May 19 on their new house in Exeter.

Daniels said she found DeVellis through an Internet search after an unsuccessful experience with a Rhode Island agent who was purportedly working as their buyer’s agent; he works at a full-service agency as a traditional agent.

Although DeVellis was a complete stranger, Daniels was impressed after talking to her on the phone and they began working together.

Daniels said her most important issue was finding a property where it would be legally permissible to park her mobile home.

“Cathy would go to the Town Hall and look it up,” Daniels said. “She would look at the covenants” for a particular housing subdivision. Daniels said this kind of legwork, which yielded “objective answers to questions,” was particularly important to her as a buyer searching from a remote location.

“She’s bright, and aggressive in a nice way,” Daniels said. “She’s also street savvy, and she’s a doer.”

Kathleen Corbett, who has been working as a buyer’s agent in Rhode Island with her husband since 1991, said good buyer’s agents are willing to dig for and disclose information, even if it may torpedo a sale — finding a leaking underground tank, for instance — to protect the interests of buyers.

Although like traditional agents, exclusive buyer’s agents are often compensated from the commissions paid by sellers, EBAs usually ask their clients to sign contracts that ensure they are paid even if the purchase is conducted another way, such as buying from unrepresented sellers, or sellers who are not willing to pay buyer’s agents.

Corbett said she and her husband have encountered hostility from traditional agents as the “pioneers” in exclusive-buyer agencies in Rhode Island.

Corbett herself worked as a traditional agent for years, but said she always felt “uncomfortable” about working with buyers when she was really representing sellers as a listing agent.

“I always felt I was walking that fine line,” she said. But as a buyer’s agent, “I could tell them everything — even not to buy the house, and why not to buy it.”

“They work for you and only for you,” another of DeVellis’ clients, Susan Gordon, said of buyers’ agents. Gordon bought her North Kingstown house with DeVellis, whom she met through a friend who is a former client.

“I think it’s a conflict of interest” for an agent to work with both sides in a transaction, Gordon said.

Rhode Island’s new agency law, which goes into effect May 1, eliminates the legal presumption that all real-estate licensees represent sellers. Brokers and agents will be considered neutral unless they have signed agreements with clients stating otherwise.

The new law still allows agents to serve both sides of a transaction, however, as “neutral transaction facilitators.” A single agent will not be allowed to “represent” both sides in a sale, but the law allows different agents in the same office to cover both sides.

Rhode Island’s new law is “disturbing” in that it seems to be “abandoning agency altogether,” said Barry Nystedt, president of the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents ( www.naeba.org). Nystedt has his own buyer’s agency in Newton, Mass.

The new Rhode Island law encourages agents to facilitate transactions without offering real advice or help to either side, he said.

Nystedt said the creation of the new law was too heavily influenced by the Rhode Island Association of Realtors, and that the interests of consumers deserved more attention.

Nystedt said that nationally, there are only a few hundred EBAs working today, but it represents the leading edge of “the consumer movement coming to the real-estate industry.”

People who use EBAs, he said, “are really savvy consumers who want to avoid the inherent conflicts of interest … and want to be represented.”

“We have our own standards and practices and we have our own code of ethics … and it’s buyer-centric,” he said. “If there were more consumer demand, there would be more of us.”

cdunn@projo.com