AGREEMENTS

                                               REAL ESTASTE JOURNAL

                                                       Agreements
                                           By Bill Barksdale, GRI Realtor®

One of the interesting things about my work as a real estate agent is, the people I serve are almost always making an important change in their lives. A big part of my job is to help them through these changes. They are starting a new job or career, retirement, someone has died or is going die soon, divorce, mental or physical decline, a new baby, taking care of a friend or relative, tenants have to let strangers look through their home which is about to be sold, a client may be very ill and/or needing to downsize. There are so many things that spur change, and those changes are usually accompanied by agreements.

Part of my job is to help people come to agreement.

Back in the mid 1980’s I helped to manage hospice facilities for AIDS patients. The agreement there was that I and others would be there with the people we cared for, to provide a safe place to live right up through their death. I also helped people begin to deal with their grief as their love ones died.

In my job as a real estate agent I help people come to agreement. We call it “a meeting of the minds”. An interesting phrase because it implies give and take, accepting change and other peoples’ needs as well as your own.

As an agent I help people reduce their agreements and changes, to writing. Sales agreements are contracts, agreements to do and not do specific things. How the change will happen and who does what is spelled out in the written agreement. Part of this agreement is how people will deal with things when they don’t agree, disputes. Mediation, arbitration and even law suits are part of the process at times. Most often, common sense prevails and parties come to agreement without these outside processes.

I deal most often with Purchase Agreements and Listing Agreements, having to do usually with homes and land also known as real estate, as opposed to personal property. Real Estate is commonly understood to be the land and that which is attached to it, normally buildings, but can also mean crops, water, roadways and easements. There’s another aspect to real estate called “the bundle of rights” which are the legal aspects of ownership of real property.

Real estate law is a specialized area in the practice of law. Some attorneys specialize only in real estate issues, while other attorneys know very little, if anything, about real estate law and its related issues.

One issue that comes up from time-to-time is when people made agreements years ago to buy land or a home together, but didn’t put in writing, the legal details about how those verbal agreements would work. I’ve heard clients say that “making it legal” implied lack of trust, therefore they didn’t “put it in writing”. But you know, it’s not a lack of trust, it’s just making things clear for yourself and each other. 

Good business avoids problems and hurt feelings years later. People change. That’s unavoidable. Sometimes the real estate has to be sold because those partners are moving in different directions with their lives.

In California, which often leads the way in laws that other states later recognize as practical, all real estate sales must be in writing. Oral or verbal real estate agreements are not considered binding normally. I say normally, because sometimes a court of law can make decisions that can force legal remedies on unwritten real estate matters, things such as prescriptive rights.

I’m not qualified to provide legal advice so if you need help with legal issues please consult a qualified professional.

Tragically, there are situations where one person’s name was put on the Deed leaving another deserving party off. A deed is legal proof of who the owner(s) is/are. There may be an unmarried partner or others who contributed and are entitled to a share of the property, but their name wasn’t put in a written agreement. I know of cases where an unmarried partner was thrown out of their own home by distant relatives just because the detail of putting the partner in a will or trust or deed as the inheritor of the house was forgotten. Always prepare a will and/or trust if you own real estate. Also consider a written Partnership Agreement of some kind to clarify the agreement further, signed by all effected parties. It’s so important.

Putting in writing who owns the property and in what legal manner, sometimes called vesting, is essential. How the real estate will be handled in the event of the owner’s severe disability or death is essential to be reduced to writing so there is no doubt to a judge or government official who the successor owner or conservator is. If you don’t put it in writing now, a judge or legal convention will decide, and that may not be what you intend.

There’s so much to be said about agreements that applies to virtually every aspect of social interaction. In the United States we often call it “The Rule Of Law”. No one is above the law, we like to say. When the law is unfair our unjust, it needs to be changed.

When someone violates the law there are supposed to be consequences and legal remedies. Ethics – doing the right thing – we can rightly assume is the basis of fair and just law and law enforcement. Agreements. Something to think about.

Bill Barksdale was a 2016 inductee into the Realtor® Hall of Fame. He is an agent at Coldwell Banker Mendo Realty Inc. He can be reached at 707-489-2232, bark@pacific.net