Canceling Listing Contract
Canceling Listing Contract
When you enter into a listing contract with a real estate agent or agency, both parties are bound to undertake the responsibilities as per the contract. A contract expiry date is set and during that period, the agent has to make all efforts to sell your property. This might not happen in every case and your relationship with the agent might go bad due to the agent not making the required effort or for any other reason. If this happens, you certainly do not want to wait for the contract to expire and should be aware of all possible options to cancel the existing listing contract with that agent.
LACK OF MARKETING EFFORTS
Your agent might decide to save some bucks on marketing efforts and prepare bad quality photographs or signage for your listing. He might not be spending his efforts to get maximum exposure for you listing using all offline and online tools. If you think this is the case, it might be better to cancel the contract and move on. Proper marketing of real estate is something that cannot be ignored.
Disagreements
In some cases, it is natural that the owner and the listing agent simply do not have matching personalities which might lead to conflicts as time goes on during the listing period. It is best to judge whether you can get along till the end without wasting too much time.
HOW TO CANCEL LISTING CONTRACT
Once you have decided that it is time to part ways with your agent, it is time to cancel your listing contract in the appropriate way. The best way to cancel a contract is to do it with mutual consent. If you have made the decision to cancel, do it without any delay and let your agent know about it in writing. The agent will then decide whether to accept your cancel request or not and will usually charge a cancellation fee so be prepared to pay some amount if you want to go ahead with your decision.
If an agent refuses your request, you can go and directly ask the brokerage house. Some brokerages will assign you another agent in order to maintain a good reputation and customer goodwill. If this also does not work out for you, you can hire a real estate lawyer to assist you with your cancellation and go to court.
