A real estate agent helped us to manage our house now, with some monthly management fees of course.
When we signed a “property rental management” contract with our real estate agent, there is a clause in the contract which says if we sell the house to this tenent within, say, 6 (or 3?) months when the lease is ended and the tenant buys the house from us, we are obliged to pay the real estate agent commissions.
We think we have no intention to sell the house right now - especially when we are not living there. If we sold the house now (without going back to live there for at least 3 years first), we would be concerned about the potential capital gain tax more than anything else.
Our tenants take good care of the house, according to our real estate agent. We therefore rent the house to them at a slightly-below-market-rental-price to them.
One of our property managers wanted us to sign a contract that said that if we sold the property to anyone we would have to pay them a commission. It also had a clause that we would have to pay them if we didn’t fix all units so that they could be occupied. We refused to sign and then one of the tenants died owing a year of rent plus had a LOT of complaints from others. We quickly got a better property manager and got the old one to provide a full accounting. They were very bad but H didn’t think anyone else would want to manage the property. We so so happy with the new agent! It makes a world of difference between a good agent and one who just collects management fees and even lies to you about what they purchased and repairs they made.
The Sellers (you) owe the agent nothing. Whether the Buyer owes the agent anything will be included in the Buyer’s Agency contract that the Buyer signed. Most contracts around here include -ridiculously- another 18 months after the termination of the contract under which the Buyer will owe commission to the Agent if the Buyer purchases any house for which the Agent was the “procuring cause”.
No absolutely not, unless there was a contract that called for a commission. OP had no contract so she owes no commission. Whatever the buyer may owe – if anything – is governed by the terms of her contract with the agent (if any). But that is of no concern of the OP.
But the OP had NO contract with the agent. Just because an agent shows up on your doorstep and says, “These people want to buy your house” doesn’t mean you owe the agent anything!
VeryHappy–this is a vacation home. Plan, if we sell,is to buy another place. This is an area with a lot of vacation homes that go on and off the market.
Then there’s really not much inconvenience to you, is there. And if you can’t buy another vacation home for this summer, you can rent one instead while you continue looking. (I’m assuming you mainly use the home in the summer, which may not be the case.)