Seller representation

What a listing agreement commits you to

A listing agreement is the contract that appoints a brokerage to sell your home. It sets the price you are asking, the length of the appointment, the fee and how it is calculated, and what the brokerage will do. Everything in it is negotiable before it is signed and difficult to change afterwards, which is why the reading matters more than the signing.

The term length is the clause sellers most often accept without thinking about it. A longer term gives a brokerage more time to work and gives you less room to change course if the approach is not producing viewings. Ask what happens if you want to end it early, and get that answer in the document rather than as a verbal assurance.

The fee clause deserves the same attention. Ask how it is calculated, what portion is offered to a cooperating brokerage that brings a buyer, and in what circumstances it becomes payable even if the sale does not complete.

• The asking price, and who decides when to change it
• The term, and exactly how you end the agreement before it expires
• The fee, how it is calculated, and what is offered to a cooperating brokerage
• Whether the fee is payable if a sale is agreed but does not complete
• What marketing is included, and what is charged separately
• How showings are arranged, and what notice you receive
• Where the deposit is held, and by whom

The duties owed to you once you are a client

The same ten duties in section 30 of the Real Estate Services Rules that protect a buyer protect you as a seller, and two of them are worth reading closely before you list.

The seventh duty requires that all offers be communicated to you in a timely, objective and unbiased way. Every offer means every offer, including one that is obviously too low and one that arrives from an unrepresented buyer. Objective and unbiased means the offer is presented to you as it is, rather than filtered through what somebody else would prefer you did with it.

The sixth duty requires disclosure to you of all known material information about the real estate services. If your brokerage learns something that affects the sale, you are entitled to hear it. Combined with the confidentiality duty in the fifth, the shape of the relationship becomes clear: information about you stays in, information relevant to you comes out.

• Act in the best interests of the client.
• Act in accordance with the lawful instructions of the client.
• Act only within the scope of the authority the client has given.
• Advise the client to get independent professional advice on matters outside the licensee's expertise.
• Keep information about the client confidential.
• Disclose to the client all known material information about the real estate services.
• Communicate all offers to the client in a timely, objective and unbiased way.
• Use reasonable efforts to discover relevant facts about any property the client is considering buying.
• Take reasonable steps to avoid any conflict of interest.
• Disclose a conflict of interest promptly and in writing, in a document separate from any other agreement.

What you have to disclose about the home

Most sellers in British Columbia complete a Property Disclosure Statement. It is a set of questions about the property answered to the best of your knowledge, and it becomes part of the contract when the parties agree that it does. Answering carelessly creates a problem that outlives the sale.

Separate from that form, and more important, is the rule on material latent defects. A latent defect is one that could not be discovered by a reasonable inspection of the property. Where a defect of that kind is known and it renders the property dangerous, unfit to live in, or unfit for the purpose the buyer has stated, it has to be disclosed to the buyer whether or not anybody asks about it. A defect the buyer could see for themselves is a different category.

The practical approach is to write down everything you know about the building, including the repairs that were done informally and the problems that were solved by working around them. Then go through that list with your brokerage and your lawyer and decide what has to be disclosed. A defect disclosed before an offer is a negotiation. The same defect discovered afterwards is a dispute.

• Work done without a permit, or with a permit that was never finalised
• Water entry, whatever the cause and however long ago it was resolved
• An oil tank that was or may have been buried on the lot
• Repairs made by the owner rather than by a trade
• Anything a past inspection report identified, whether or not it was fixed

The Property Disclosure Statement in BC Documents needed to sell a strata unit

Pricing from evidence rather than from hope

There are two numbers available for any home and only one of them is evidence. A completed sale is a price a buyer actually paid. An asking price is a price a seller hopes to get, and the homes still sitting on the market at a given price are the ones that price has not worked for.

When a price is proposed to you, ask which completed sales support it and how each of those properties differs from yours. Differences in lot size, condition, age of the major systems, orientation, parking and street all move a price, and a list of sales without those differences described is a list rather than an analysis.

Your assessment notice is a third number, and it answers a different question. BC Assessment values property as at July 1, and considers the physical condition and permitted use as at October 31, with notices arriving each January. So a notice you receive in January 2026 reflects what the home would have sold for around July 1, 2025. That is a useful reference point and a poor asking price.

• Ask for completed sales, with the closing date of each
• Ask how each comparable differs from your home, item by item
• Ask which sales were excluded from the comparison, and why
• Treat active asking prices as competition rather than as evidence
• Read your assessment notice as a July 1 valuation from the previous year

BC Assessment value versus market value How to price a home in a balanced market Ask for a market evaluation

Offers, competing offers, and what you may be told

When more than one offer arrives, the rules do not require you to run the process in any particular way, and they do not permit your brokerage to disclose the terms of one buyer's offer to another buyer without your instruction. What is disclosed, and to whom, is your decision, taken with advice about the consequences.

The consequence worth understanding is that buyers behave differently depending on what they know. A buyer told there are three offers may raise their price, or may withdraw rather than compete. There is no version of this that produces the highest number every time, which is why the decision belongs to you rather than to a formula.

Price is also not the only term. A higher offer with a financing condition, a long completion date and a small deposit can be worth less than a lower offer that is unconditional with a large deposit, because the first one carries more ways to fail. Ask for the offers to be set out side by side on every term, not just on price.

• The price, and the deposit amount and when it is payable
• Which conditions are included, and how many days each one runs
• The completion, possession and adjustment dates
• What is included and excluded from the sale
• Whether the buyer is represented, and by whom

What sellers should know about multiple offers

The buyer's three business days, from your side

Once you accept an offer on residential property, the buyer has three business days in which they can cancel the contract. This is the Home Buyer Rescission Period, it has applied since January 3, 2023, and neither you nor the buyer can waive it or agree it away.

If a buyer uses it, they pay you a fee set by regulation at 0.25% of the purchase price in the contract. On a sale at $1,200,000 that is $3,000. The buyer serves notice by registered mail, by fax, or by email with a requested read receipt, using the contact details in the contract, and the notice takes effect when it is sent.

Four categories sit outside the right: property on leased land, a leasehold interest, a sale at auction, and a sale under a court order or court supervision. For every other residential sale, plan on the first three business days after acceptance being a period in which the contract can still end. That is a reason to keep the property presentable and to avoid making commitments elsewhere that depend on the sale surviving that window.

What to have ready before the home goes on the market

The documents that slow a sale down are the ones nobody looks for until a buyer asks. Assembling them first turns a two-week delay into an afternoon.

For a strata unit that means the Form B, the bylaws, the minutes for the last two years, the depreciation report and the contingency reserve fund balance. For a detached house it means the title search, the permit history for any addition or suite, a survey certificate if one exists, and the service records for the roof, furnace and hot water tank. For either, it means the last two years of property tax notices and any inspection report already in your possession.

• Title search, and an explanation of every charge registered against it
• Permit history for additions, suites, decks and anything structural
• Strata: Form B, bylaws, two years of minutes, depreciation report, reserve fund balance
• Service records and ages for roof, furnace, hot water tank and electrical panel
• Property tax notices, and the current year's assessment notice
• Any inspection report you hold, whether or not it is recent

Listing seasonality in Metro Vancouver