Real Estate Agency

To buy or sell real estate, most people use the services of one or more real estate agents. In any real estate transaction, it is important to understand the relationship of the various agents, and to whom they owe a fiduciary duty, and to those who are not represented.Common and statutory laws governs the relationships in an agency. An agent is one who represents the principal, or client, in a transaction, has a fiduciary responsibility to the principal, and acts on behalf of the principal. The fiduciary duty of the agent to the client is to represent the client to the greatest extent possible within the confines of the law. A customer is the other party to the transaction who is not represented by the agent. Although the agent owes no fiduciary duty to a customer, the seller’s agent must, nonetheless, disclose important information about the property and be honest to the customer. A customer can, and often will, have their own agent. For instance, in a real estate transaction where both the buyer and the seller are represented by agents, the buyer is a customer of the seller and the seller is a customer of the buyer. The seller’s agent owes no fiduciary duty to the buyer and the buyer’s agent owes no fiduciary duty to the seller.