Expense Reimbursement Clause in Full Service Sale Listing Agreement

[vicki]

Thank you for taking our call the other day. My father is scheduled to come the week of March 17. If all goes well and he likes the pricing he might sign it right after meeting the partner brokers in person.

I haven’t read the agreement yet, but my father did and he told me there is a $300 charge if the property doesn’t sell. I know it’s a negligible amount but he said that as a matter of principle he was not willing to pay some sort of penalty for the property not selling, that it “should be him charging the fee to you for not selling the condo and not the other way around.”

He can get stubborn with some minor details, if it’s doesn’t make a big difference to you I would just drop the $300 charge, whatever it is.

Thanks

[HauseitAdmin]

The $300 expense reimbursement (in place as of this writing in early 2019 for full service listings only) is kind of like a hotel hold on your credit card, as our partner brokers will automatically roll that into the commission if the property sells. Meaning that it's actually free.

This covers the actual cost of the 8 professional photographs and 2D floorplan they pay for at the beginning of the arrangement, which are yours to keep by the way. Having this paid for upfront protects them in case the seller disappears on day 2. Plus, none of our partner brokers would ever go after a client over a few hundred dollars.

This is pretty reasonable given that they’re offering to take a haircut on commission, and expense reimbursement clauses in most traditional listing agreements can be $1,000 to $2,000 or more!