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The agency agreement
For as long as the agreement says. The term is a negotiated number in the same way as the fee, so the question worth asking is not what the law allows but what length suits your property, your method of sale and the campaign you are going to run.
The length of an agency agreement is negotiated, the same as the fee and the marketing schedule. An agency will propose the term it prefers, but it is a number in a document and it can be discussed before you sign.
The term is the window in which one agency holds the listing, so the question is how long the campaign needs, plus the time it takes to work through the interest it produces.
A longer term gives the campaign room. If the first approach does not produce a buyer there is time to revisit the price expectation, refresh the photography or change the method of sale without renegotiating anything. It also commits you for that whole period, so if the arrangement is not working you are relying on the agency agreeing to release you.
A shorter term keeps your options open and brings the review point forward. The trade is that a campaign can reach its end date with live interest still being worked through, and you then extend or sign again to let the agency finish.
An auction or a deadline has a fixed date in the middle of it, and the work does not stop there. People who did not buy on the day are often the ones who come back, so the term needs to cover the campaign, the date itself and the period after it.
A listing at a price has no date built in, so the term carries more of the weight. Agree at the same time when the price is reviewed, when the marketing is refreshed, and what changes in the second half of the term.
Unless the agreement provides otherwise, it ends on that date, the marketing stops and you are free to sign with anyone, including the same agency again. One obligation outlives it: a fee can still be payable if you sell to a buyer that agency introduced, for a period after the agency ends, and you are entitled to the list of those names on cancellation, both set out in cancelling a listing agreement.
No law sets a maximum term, so an agreement written to run longer than 90 days is valid, and section 131 of the Real Estate Agents Act 2008 gives an exit rather than a cap: where a sole agency for residential property runs longer than 90 days, either party may cancel once 90 days have passed from signing. That right, and the separate first working day cancellation under section 130, are covered in cancelling a listing agreement.
Ask for the term, the date it starts, what happens when it ends and the period afterwards on an introduced buyer, together and in writing. Those four numbers are the real length of what you are signing.
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