Procuring Cause and Multiple Agents

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Dear Mr. Melson,

If you sign two or more non-exclusive buyer's agent agreements in your search for a home to buy, how do you avoid putting yourself at risk for a procuring cause situation from either agent, or even the seller?

Thank you,

A Fan

The first thing I've got to say here is that I am not a lawyer, so for specific legal advice for your state and your situation, consult one. That said, here's a broad brush picture of what I've been given to understand.

I am a big fan of the non-exclusive buyers agency contract. Consumers give someone a chance to get the job done, and the agents concerned have only themselves to blame if they can't. Nor does it tie consumers to one particular agent. There's no way of telling if any particular agent is any good until they've shown you some property. They could be a bozo, they could be a commission grabber, they could have any number of potential problems with a buyer's agent. Consumers who limit themselves to non-exclusive contracts can have any number of agents they want working for them, as any counting number is possible. Finally, they can fire a bad agent simply by not working with them any more. The only thing you possibly give up is the ability to buy houses they introduced you to, and if you liked any of them, you would have made offers already. Nor is even that an absolute prohibition, as we will see a little later on.

The simplest way to deal with this is to tell whomever you're working with if you've seen a property before. You tell the agent you're with before they take you out there that they're not the procuring cause. I give every client a full list of what I'm planning to show them at the start of every hunting trip - and you should insist on this anyway, for this and many other reasons. I want my clients to have ready made paper for taking notes and writing down questions they may have and answers they get, even if that answer is, "I don't know yet but I will find out." If the clients don't want to see a particular property, if they've seen it before with someone else, etcetera, they have an opportunity to say so right away. If an agent takes you to something like that knowing they're not the procuring cause, they have no grounds for complaint when they don't get the commission. The easiest way for consumers is, "Joe with the office down the street already showed us 1234 Main Street, and we're considering it. We want you to show us something better if you can." That serves notice that there is no commission there for them, and it's going to be a rare exception that bothers with that property. If they start talking it down at that point, get out of the car, and tell them that their services are no longer desired. Here they were planning to show it to you as something they thought you should seriously consider, and now they're telling you it's a bad property because someone else will get the commission? They aren't out for your best interests, and they've just told you that in terms anyone should be able to understand. Fire them immediately, without any appeal. Nonetheless, dealing with the issue in this manner is more than sufficient to stop problems before they start as well as dead simple.

Note that I said it's sufficient, which is a logician's term that means it's at least enough. It's not the minimum necessary in this case. The entire thing about "procuring cause" is that this is the agent who made you want to buy the property. Therefore, sometimes I'm willing to disregard "I've seen it before" for clients I've got a good rapport with, if they tell me that they're not interested in that property for whatever reason that seems to them good and sufficient. "Please trust me with fifteen minutes of your time, because I think I've seen something that may change your mind." The essential point is that they've given me evidence that the other agent is not the procuring cause, because they did the exact opposite of interesting them in the property - they turned them off of it. If I can turn that around because I understand something about the property and their situation that causes them to see what I see, I am the procuring cause, and I have demonstrably provided value to those clients. It's rare, but it does happen. Two elements that are always necessary before I want to show a property: That I believe it will satisfy the client's needs and there's a good chance they'll like it enough to make an offer I can sell to the owners.

I should also mention that it's bad business for agents or brokerages to sue clients for commissions. Not only is it bad publicity and a good way to scare off future clients as well as probably more money to prosecute than you'll win if you're successful and half a dozen other disasters, but I've never heard of any agent or brokerage actually winning such a case. This is one reason why the incentives are there for agents to want to tie up your business with an exclusive agreement, but from a consumer point of view, exclusive buyer's agency agreements are a disaster in progress for no gain. You're tying your ability to buy a property for the next six months to one particular agent based upon their behavior in their office? I don't think so. I wouldn't do that on a bet, and neither should you. The games that can be played when one particular agent controls the transaction are too numerous to mention. The vast majority of my clients never talk to another agent, but that's by the client's choice, because I demonstrate I've got their best interests foremost in my mind every time we talk, meet, or correspond, and that they'll be lucky if the other agent is half as good as me. The knowledge that they do have a choice is one more motivation to do the best possible job I can, and a consumer can never have too many reasons why their agents want to do their best work possible. Which do you think is likely to do better work: The agent who knows that a commission is in the bag (eventually) as soon as he's got a signature on a piece of paper, or an agent who knows that the client always has a choice to try out the competition? I put it to you that the agent who's willing to be in the latter category will not only work harder, but that they're much more likely to be a capable agent, confident of their ability to make that client happier than anyone else.

This example may be fictional, but the character portrayed has one thing in common with a good agent, or anyone who really is good at what they do: He's not afraid to be measured against the competition.

I may not be Lancelot (he's fictional. I don't have the author writing fiats in my favor), but I'm more than happy to measure myself against the competition in the only way that counts: the actual battle to make my clients happy. This is what the non-exclusive agreement allows the consumer to do - find their Lancelot, or at least Bors or Percival, instead of being stuck with Mordred. It's easy for Mordred to talk the same game as Lancelot, which is why you need to get them out in the field to observe them at work. Non-exclusive agency agreements let you do that. They doesn't bind consumers to the first agent they meet for six months that might as well be forever, because most people aren't going to wait that long if he isn't as up to the task as he might be. Furthermore, it's a lot easier to manage than trying to get out of that exclusive contract Mordred talked you into.

Caveat Emptor

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Dan Melson published on January 27, 2021 7:00 AM.

What Does It Mean To Fall Out Of Escrow? was the previous entry in this blog.

Pre-Payment Penalties and Second Trust Deeds is the next entry in this blog.

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