Florida Real Estate Listing Agreements

Exclusive Agency Listings

By definition this type of agreement in which the home owner appoints a real estate broker as the exclusive agent to sell the property for a pre determined period of time, usually 8 to 12 months but can be as little as 3, at a pre- determined price or Listing Price and a pre-determined commission paid to the broker for the sale. In this type of contract the owner maintains the right to directly sell the property without paying a commission if the buyer did not come as a result of the agent´s effort.

Your real estate agent is your strongest allied in selling the property, but this type of agreement allows the home owner to compete with the agent, thus making it a complicated relationship in which a greedy buyer may approach directly the homeowner and negotiate a better price.

This type of agreement is easily circumvented hence very unpopular among real estate agents. No agent in Sarasota, which really is committed to sell a property, will accept this type of agreement because of the obvious difficulty to track where the buyer came from thus making all agents´ efforts to sell null, if the buyer claims otherwise. Often a seller feels inclined to sell directly and avoid paying a commission easily accomplished by just waiting to close after the expiration of the agreement. In addition, there are no provisions for listing in the Multiple Listing Service hence no other brokers or agents involved. A commission will be paid only if the real estate is sold to a buyer obtained through that brokerage.

Reputable agents will not invest any effort in this type of transaction since there are time and expenses involved, that will not be recovered if the agent is circumvented. A sign of the times, contracts of this kind are biased and often detrimental to the agent or call for an ethical conduct among parties that no longer exits or is rare to find and difficult to prove in a court of law which in term demands additional expenses.

The agent may choose or agreed upon not to advertise your property in the MLS making it available to thousands of other real estate agents and possible buyers. Not having your property listed with an online search engine or the MLS is to curtail the chances of selling you property sooner and at a better price.

If you are determined to sell your property and want an agent to work hard to sell the house, honestly earning a commission then you might consider other types of agreement since the Exclusive Agency Listing will not yield the results you expect in Sarasota or anywhere else.