Buyer allowed to choose to be represented after seeing my apartment

[anjk30]

Hi - on the contract, # 5C basically says that if a prospective buyer comes to view my apt without a broker, that later they can come back and say they have a broker and use one --- that does NOT work for me. Someone tried that already on my condo and I told them to leave.

If a buyer comes w/o a broker, that it is. I ask every person that enters and ask them to sign their name and fill out their broker and if they have none, I will NOT pay one later for that same buyer.

Please let me know if I am understanding correctly. I believe I do and that just seems hokey to me. I feel like you will take the inquiries from buyers and try to get them to work with you later once they have seen the apt or intercept their inquiry to attempt to get them to work with you.

Please advise.

[HauseitAdmin]

Hello Anj, thank you for the great question. Buyers have the right to choose representation at any point, and listing agents must respect a buyer's right to work with the agent of their choice (see this opinion letter from the New York Department of State in our article Do Real Estate Agents Split Commission?).

This is quite standard in the industry, and buyers starting out in their search will frequently attend open houses unaccompanied. However, it is quite normal for buyers to then choose to have a buyer's agent down the road.

Of course, whether an agent is the procuring cause of a sale is less cut and dry. In the industry, typically procuring cause happens if the buyer's agent submits and successfully negotiates an accepted offer on the buyer's behalf.

This means that even though a buyer may have the right to loop in an agent, the agent may not be the procuring cause and thus eligible for commission if the agent was looped in too late (i.e. days before closing, after a contract has been signed etc.).

As you can imagine, our partner brokers are taking a small flat fee to list your property, and it would be extremely uneconomical for them to be involved in disputes around procuring cause. Since this is your position, we feel that it is best for you to pursue a traditional For Sale By Owner listing (i.e. listing it yourself on Craigslist, FaceBook, Zillow etc.).

To your last point, please check out the FAQ section in our Agent Assisted FSBO product page.

Calls, text messages and email inquiries are received by our partner brokers’ front desk staff and relayed to you during normal business hours within a commercially reasonable amount of time, as defined by our partner brokers.

Per the above, all inquiries are relayed to you. Per the agreement, you don't owe our partner brokers anything more than the flat fee, with the reasonable protection for proof of an existing client of our partner brokers.

We unfortunately cannot offer any edits to the flat fee agreement. We understand this may not work for you, so we will be refunding your order by the end of the day unless we hear from you otherwise. Thank you for trying us out.