Listing agreement
A listing agreement is the written agreement in which a property owner engages a real estate licensee to market and sell the property. Virginia's statute calls it a brokerage agreement, and the paper sets the marketing, the price and terms the licensee seeks, how long it runs, and the fee.
A trade name Virginia's brokerage statute never uses
Look for listing agreement in Virginia's brokerage relationship statute and you will not find it defined. The Code calls the same paper a brokerage agreement, and Va. Code 54.1-2130 defines that term in a single sentence.
"Brokerage agreement" means the written agreement creating a brokerage relationship between a client and a licensee.
Va. Code 54.1-2130
Listing agreement is what the trade calls that agreement when the client is a seller. The statutory word is broader because it has to cover a buyer who engages a licensee as well, and that wider meaning is set out under brokerage agreement. On a tract in Southwest Virginia the two phrases name one document. When a question about it reaches the Code, the Code answers it under brokerage agreement, whatever heading is printed at the top of the form.
The first requirement is the plainest one. Va. Code 54.1-2137 says brokerage agreements shall be in writing, so the terms an owner talks through with a licensee about putting land on the market end up on paper, and that paper can go to an attorney before anything is signed.
The marketing, the price sought, the term and the fee
For a seller, the working parts of the paper are the ones the licensee is measured against once the property is listed.
Virginia's seller-side statute ties the licensee's work to the agreement directly. A licensee engaged by a seller promotes the seller's interests by conducting marketing activities in accordance with the brokerage agreement, and by seeking a sale at the price and terms agreed in the brokerage agreement or at a price and terms acceptable to the seller. So the listing agreement is the yardstick for two things a seller cares about most: what is done to find a buyer, and what kind of offer the licensee is looking for.
Around those two duties sit the paper's other working lines. Under Va. Code 54.1-2137 the agreement has a definite termination date, states the amount of the brokerage fees and how and when they are paid, states the services the licensee will render, and carries any other terms the client and the licensee agreed to. The full list of what the Code requires, including what happens when no end date is written in, and every way the relationship can end, is set out in what a Virginia brokerage agreement has to include. How this office approaches pricing and marketing a tract before any of that is written down is on the sell your land page, and which buyers a tract gets put in front of is taken up in how land is marketed to builders.
Exclusive forms, and the net listing the Board's regulation rules out
Listing agreements also travel under the names of their forms, and the most common name comes from a federal description rather than a Virginia rule.
The Federal Trade Commission describes the traditional form, an Exclusive Right to Sell Listing, as one where the owner appoints a broker for a set period as exclusive agent and agrees to pay the listing broker a commission when the property sells, regardless of whether the broker or the homeowner caused the sale. That is how a federal agency describes the form. What a signed agreement actually does is in its own words, and the comparison with the exclusive agency form is drawn under exclusive right to sell. Whether an owner who has listed can still close with the landowner next door is its own question, answered in listing land and still selling to a neighbor.
About to put land on the market and want the listing agreement explained first?
Send Lowell the property and he will go through what its listing agreement would cover, from the marketing and the term to the fee line, before anything is signed. No cost, no obligation.
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Questions about this term
Is a listing contract the same thing as a listing agreement?
In practice they name the same paper, the one a seller makes with a licensee to market a property. Virginia's brokerage statute calls that paper a brokerage agreement, and the Real Estate Board's regulation 18VAC135-20-280 A 5 uses listing contract when it lists a net return arrangement among improper financial transactions and dealings. The heading does not change the Code's test: a written agreement creating a brokerage relationship between a client and a licensee is a brokerage agreement.
Once my land is under contract, does the listing agent keep looking for other offers?
Not unless the paper says so. A licensee engaged by a seller is not obligated to seek additional offers to purchase while the property is subject to a contract of sale, unless that was agreed to as part of the brokerage agreement or the contract of sale provides for it. If continued marketing matters, it has to be written into one of those two documents.
Where this page's facts come from
Every rule, office and figure above traces to one of these. Rules change; check the office before you act on one.
- Va. Code 54.1-2130, Definitions Code of Virginia
- Va. Code 54.1-2137, Commencement and termination of brokerage relationships; brokerage agreements required Code of Virginia
- Va. Code 54.1-2131, Licensees engaged by sellers Code of Virginia
- 18VAC135-20-280 A 5, Improper financial transactions and dealings (Regulations of the Real Estate Board, Chapter 20) Virginia Real Estate Board
- MiRealSource Settles Charges it Illegally Restrained Competition (press release, February 2007) Federal Trade Commission