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Questions and concerns regarding "Exclusive Right to Represent Tenant Agreement"

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rlg11

Junior Member
Questions and concerns regarding "Exclusive Right to Represent Tenant Agreement"

First of all, apologies if this post should appear under Real Estate Law; at this stage, I feel it's only related to real estate, and is in fact a consumer matter.

I and two friends are seeking to rent a home in the state of Virginia (we all currently reside in Virginia, too). This week we spoke with a realtor about a property he had listed on a public web site. He informed us several times that his services - finding for us and renting to us a property - would cost us nothing, and that we didn't have to work with him exclusively (both before and after we agreed to work with him). When we expressed a desire to look at the property, he told us that there were some documents we'd have to sign so that he'd be "allowed to show" us properties - nothing important, "you don't even have to read them."

I did read the first two documents, both of which are not legal agreements or contracts, just informational. The realtor was extremely dismissive of the last document and passed around photos of properties while we to read the document, and I confess that I didn't read it as thoroughly as I should have. We all signed it. It is titled "Exclusive Right to Represent Tenant Agreement" (has anyone else heard about this?) and now that I have properly read it several times, I understand it to essentially make us beholden to this realtor in our search for a rental home.

Specifically, we have agreed to:
1. Pay the realtor (as "Broker") a broker's fee of "25% of first months rent or greater," unless the landlord agrees to compensate the Broker, and then we pay the balance if the landlord chooses to pay less than the total of the fee.
2. Work exclusively with this realtor during the term of the agreement, which is set to expire in June, three months after which we need to have found a house.

There are additional clauses that I find worrisome, but less so than these, which are restrictive and contradictory to what he told us.

I fully recognize that we share blame here for having believed the realtor and signed the documents without taking the time to understand them. I'm not looking to be told that I'm an idiot, please - I've already told myself that. I expect that there's no way out of the mess now and I and my friends will have to tolerate however the realtor chooses to treat us, but if there's an alternative, I'd like to know what it is.

He might also be a completely well-meaning individual who'll see us into a nice home for which the landlord will pay the full finder's fee, but he's already lied, and to me, that means anything else is possible. Perhaps it's true that generally, agreements such as these are never tested, but my friends and I aren't wealthy people and if he should use the "or greater" attachment to the Broker's Fee to charge us $3,000 for finding us a place, we'd be in a tight spot, and as I understand this document, we can't say no.

The advice I'm looking for is this: Is it possible to legally annul a signed written agreement such as this? If so, under what conditions could we do so? If the realtor made reassurances to us in direct contradiction of clauses in the agreement, that we all heard, do we have any grounds for challenging the legitimacy of the agreement?

And if the answers to questions 1 and 3 are no, but you have suggestions for how we might approach the situation and still maintain some control over our home search, we would greatly appreciate your help. We would also appreciate suggestions as to where we might go (government consumer affairs organizations, local government ombudsmen?) for assistance if we can challenge the agreement.

If it's of any use, I'd be happy to provide the text of the agreement (excluding any personal or identifying information, ours or the realtor's). Thank you for reading, and for any advice you can provide (and apologies for the length of this post).

-RLG
 



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