Success Happy

will a real lawyer please stand up. a licensed real estate agent did a successful property sale for a seller.?

Relied upon the verbal promise of payment of commission by the seller, agent brought a buyer and sealed the deal. After sale, the seller refused to sign the commission agreement and dishonour the promise of payment. what can agent do to recover the commission payable by seller?

Public Comments

1. In your state, do they use escrow companies to handle the transaction? If so, you should've submitted a commission demand to escrow before the close. Then there would've been an actual "bill" to escrow. Actually, the problem started in the beginning of the transaction, not the end. One of the basic laws of real estate is that verbal agreements account for nothing. You should've had them sign the commission agreement when you presented the offer. Also, in your case not only do you not have a commission agreement, but you have nothing in writing that creates or clarifies an agency relationship. That could cause a multitude of problems. Depending on your state, you could've broken the law. Unfortunately for you, I think you're out of luck. The seller didn't violate an agreement- you didn't legally have one, so there's no way to recover anything. Where was your broker in all of this?
2. I'll try this AGAIN. In every state I am familiar with, you are not ALLOWED to collect a commission unless you are legally contracted to either the buyer OR the seller of the property. If you are only a licensed agent, you operated outside the purview of your managing broker. You can't do business without working under a licensed broker. You didn't have a written contract. Is this clear enough now ? (BTW, the above is basic in real estate contract law. How did you manage to pass the tests if you don't know this ?)
3. One of the first things we learn in the real estate course is that all valid and enforceable contracts MUST BE IN WRITING. Real Estate 101... You will probably have a very hard time suing for procuring cause if there was nothing in writing that legally obligated the seller to pay you. A judge will want to know why it came to be that you did not include this in the offer or by means of obtaining a listing agreement or an exclusive buyer agreement. There is an obvious underlying reason why you chose to not have a written element in place binding the seller to pay you PRIOR to "sealing the deal".