Our read: ethically questionable but probably not illegal, and since we are not attorneys, a real estate lawyer in your state is the place for a firm answer. In a standard listed transaction, a seller cannot force a buyer to use one specific lender. An off-market deal works differently in practice, because the seller controls all the terms and you are negotiating directly with them. The requirement becomes less a legal question than a practical one: do you want the property enough to accept the condition? The leverage usually sits with the seller in these situations, especially when the property is off-market and you lack easy alternatives. You can still protect yourself: - Get outside quotes anyway. Do not assume the seller's preferred loan officer is competitive just because using them is a condition. Compare rate, fees, and how the whole thing nets out against at least one independent quote, so you know exactly what the condition is costing you, if anything. - Use a bad comparison as ammunition. If the required lender is meaningfully worse, that is a concrete basis to renegotiate the condition or the price. An honest second quote is exactly what the free Roadmap conversation is for.