Laravel relationship is being inserted in the collection - eloquent

Question

I created the following accessors to check the agency property:
public function getIsAgencyAttribute() {
// agency is a boolean value
return isset( $this->ref->agency ) && $this->ref->agency;
}
// relationship
public function ref() {
return $this->hasOne(SellerRef::class, 'user_id');
}
I call the append() method:
$query = User::query();
// a bunch of when conditions...
// $query->when(...);
$data = $query->limit( $request->limit ?: config('app.limit_per_page') )->get();
$data->append('is_agency');
return response()->json( responseFormat( false, $data ) );
expected response:
{
"id": 5,
"name": "mariana",
"email": "mariana#email.com",
"blocked_at": null,
"deleted_at": null,
"created_at": "2021-03-05T02:44:46.000000Z",
"is_agency": false
}
current response:
{
"id": 5,
"name": "mariana",
"email": "mariana#email.com",
"blocked_at": null,
"deleted_at": null,
"created_at": "2021-03-05T02:44:46.000000Z",
"is_agency": false,
"ref": {
"user_id": 5,
"code": "OZO33T",
"agency": false
}
}
why is the ref property being inserted in the collection?
if a remove $data->append('is_agency'); ref disappear..

Answer 1

Solution:
//change
public function getIsAgencyAttribute() {
return isset( $this->ref->agency ) && $this->ref->agency;
}
// to this
public function getIsAgencyAttribute() {
return isset( $this->ref()->first()->agency ) && $this->ref()->first()->agency;
}