Posted by Jamoma I live in Canada, and my partners and I are starting a new business venture, and we were looking to lease some commercial space. We have had very poor luck with the real estate agents here in town - as soon as we tell them we are NOT interested in buying, they dont call us back for days. In any event, we finally found a property we did like, and have looked at it. The agent (our agent) brought us one of these "standard" lease forms whose terms were less than desireable. Now heres where it gets wierd. Our principal investor, who had wanted to remain hands off, didn't like the look of the lease at all (he has a tonne more experience with them) and said, why dont we go find the owners and negotiate directly with them ? So we suggested this to the agent and of course she said no way, that "the way it was done, is that we present an offer to their agent, and they get back to us". So we suggest to her what we wanted, and she said there was no way they were gonna go for that, and we should take what they have offered. Hardly a negotiation. So our investor simply looked up the owners in the phone book, and surprisingly, they were happy to meet with us, and they in fact were very unahppy with their agent. Apparently they had been lying to both of us. They had not even SEEN the lease "our" agent gave to us. So we hammered out a deal that day. Now, both agents are screaming blue murder and they want their commissions. I can see how the listing agent should get something, as there was likely some sort of signed contract etc. But we only spoke with our agent maybe twice (after not returning our calls for days etc) and yet she has "told" us that she legally gets the commission whether we like it or not. Is that true ? How in world is she entitled to anything ? Or am I off my rocker ?
on 11/22/2004, 9:13 pm
24.103.230.51
Will try not to be too long with this, as I am not sure if you can answer this one.
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