Types of contract

Sole agency

A sole agency is the most common type of real estate contract. It gives your agent the exclusive right to sell your house – usually for a period of 90 days. But make sure you understand what’s in the contract: agents can claim a commission if the house is sold (by anyone) at any time during the sole agency and sometimes even if it’s sold after the sole agency has ended.

You may want the option of selling the house yourself, so you’d need to include a clause in the contract that allows this. But the agent may still be able to earn a commission if they can prove the sale resulted from their advertising or marketing.

You should be careful if you’ve cancelled a sole agency and then entered into a general listing with another agent whose prospective buyer first saw the property during the sole agency. Take some legal advice before signing the sale contract to make sure you don’t pay commission to both agents.

Also check what the agreement says about cancelling. Usually a sole agency agreement converts to a general listing when the sole agency ends. If you want to end the listing entirely you’ll need to give notice of cancellation – usually 7 days.

General listing

A general listing is when you list your property with several agencies but only pay a commission to the one that sells it. This is less restrictive – but agents won’t be as motivated to sell your property. Just over 10 percent of the agents we surveyed didn’t do general listings.

Auctions and private tenders

These are other methods frequently used by agents to sell houses.

In an auction, potential buyers bid against each other for the property on a set date. Auctions can be useful for houses that are unusual or difficult to price.

In a tender, the property has no listed price. But there’s a set date for written offers – which are confidential until they’re opened in the presence of the seller (or the seller’s representative).

There’s debate about whether auctions and tenders benefit the buyer or the seller – but you’re more likely to find them in a sellers’ market rather than the current buyers’ market.

The legal bits
Conveyancing no longer has to be performed by lawyers – and there are now specialist conveyancing firms in most main centres.

You could compare the conveyancing fee from one of these specialists with that from a law firm. The conveyancing services offered are similar.