These are the weeks that give birth to country music! One of my sellers decided to "take his house off the market". We are 8 weeks into a 6 month listing and apparently he found a renter.

I informed him that he could rent the home and still keep it active in the system. He is wanting to simply take the home off the market.

I have advertised the heck out of this home (cable, real estate book, flyers, etc). What is your broker's policy in situations such as this? Do you charge them a certain fee? Make them keep the listing active? Insights would be greatly appreciated!

My thought would be to just end it and keep relations good with this guy.

My gut would say to end it with no fee but if the seller lists with someone else in the meantime then he owes you marketing money. If it sells within the time of the contract (how much you wanna bet the renter is a "buyer.") then he'll owe you a commission. If his intentions are honorable he won't have an issue with these terms at all...

My thinking is just like Perky suggested. Our Exclusive Listing Agreements (in Vermont) do not allow for unilateral cancellations.

For early "Withdrawal" from the market, I use a special little "Withdrawal Form" that allows the Seller out with the understanding that he/she has "decided" Not to Sell, and should he proceed to do so during the term of the Original Listing, then the Withdrawal is Null and Void, and I still collect the Commission. Unfortunately, Real estate is a field which requires that we be ever vigilant . . . . We're dealing with Human Beans over here.

This little technique has helped me collect at least 5 or 6 Commissions over the past 15 years or so, on which I otherwise would have had no recourse.

What you can do when you take the listing is make the seller pay for marketing costs and you will reduce all legal written reciepts off your commission at closing.

My friends that list high end homes would spend thousands on a 1 year agreement putting in high end magazines etc. only find 2 months in the seller wants to withdraw.

The way to solve it was make it their own investment and money re-imburseable at closing. In the high end market if you don't CYA you will go broke quick.

Unfortunately, this is part of the commission business. We work based on a contingency that a property sells or a buyer buys.

The best way I would handle this situation is release the seller from the listing contract as a Conditional Withdrawal. This way the seller cannot hire another agent or sell the property at all during the timeframe of our listing agreement. If they choose to do so, then we would probably pursue them for the contracted commission, especially if we had put a lot of money into marketing the home. Fair is fair.

It's bad enough we work in a business that we take the chance of working hard with a possibility of not getting paid off in the end. This is why our commissions are typically decent money. Most people that think we are overpaid don't understand this.