You are asked to sign a relationship before you understand what it is.
A representation agreement decides who owes a duty to whom, for how long, and what happens when the same brokerage stands on both sides of the table.
What is actually being decided.
A representation agreement decides who owes a duty to whom, for how long, and what happens when the same brokerage stands on both sides of the table.
What actually goes wrong.
Not a list of villains. A list of places where the record and the relationship come apart, drawn from what the regulators themselves have published.
Signed before it is understood
Duration, holdover, commission, and what happens on a multiple representation are all in the document. Most people meet them for the first time afterwards.
Whose interest, exactly
When one brokerage represents both sides, the duty owed to each changes. The person is entitled to have that explained in words they use.
A conversation nobody wrote down
Most of what determines a real estate outcome happens by phone and by message. Very little of it reaches the file.
Years later, in a complaint
By then the question is not what happened. It is what can be shown to have happened.
The same four moments, in this decision.
Every industry on this site gets the same four moments, because the relationship is the thing that repeats. Only the decision changes.
Before signing anything
The agreement is explained as a set of consequences rather than a set of clauses: how long, what happens if you change your mind, and what you are owed.
When representation changes
If the brokerage ends up on both sides, the change is surfaced as a change, with the person asked to acknowledge it rather than assumed to have noticed.
Through the offers
What was presented, when, and what was recommended. The reasoning, not only the outcome.
Afterwards
A record that answers who represented whom, what was disclosed, and when.
Better financial decisions start with better relationships.
The person understands what they are deciding. The firm can show how it was handled. Both of those come out of the same conversation.