When two real estate agencies fight over the fees for a sale

The practice of inter-agency mandates allowing several agencies to cooperate and share the remuneration when a real estate sale leads, is an old practice and which works rather well, most of the time. But it happens that the two agencies do not take the same view of the transaction, as evidenced by this dispute settled by the Court of Cassation last May (Cas. Civil. 3rd, May 11, 2022, n° 21-15.943). In this judgment, commented by lawyer Me Grégory Rouland on the Legavox platformthe courts had to settle a rare situation where the two parties could not agree on the distribution of the commission.

19,960 euros commission

For facts dating back to the spring of 2015, the real estate firm diffusion (CID company) and an Orpi agency were fighting over the 20,000 euros in commission linked to the sale of a house at the price of 499,000 euros. It must be said that the two competing professionals, both with a simple mandate under the same conditions, had shown this property to the same couple a few days apart. When the buyers choose to make an offer at the price, they send it simultaneously to the two agencies, which forward them to the owners. The Orpi agency, which establishes a sales agreement, stipulates in the document that the remuneration of 19,960 euros will be paid according to the following terms: 14,960 euros for itself and 5,000 euros for the CID agency. The latter does not hear it with the same ear and calls for equal sharing.

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Both the Court of Appeal and the Court of Cassation confirmed this approach, considering that the two real estate agencies had participated in the sale in the same proportion of work and that neither had had a more decisive and essential action than the other. The two agencies had the same simple mandate, had received the same offer at the price and the sale had been carried out under the terms of a unilateral promise to sell and a final deed, both drawn up by the notary in charge of the sale. Nothing was therefore done by an element exclusive to one of the agencies. This equality must therefore lead to equal sharing in the absence of proof of decisive intervention by one of the parties.

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