"Andrew Koenig" wrote in message
...
"Tim Nelson" wrote in message
...

My wife and I found a lot in CT where a builder was building a house
last fall. We talked to the listing agent and brought our own
agent (my wife's friend of many years) up to help us negotiate
with us. She had us sign a Exclusive Right to Represent Buyer
Agreement. The builder took our design (different than the
one he had designed) and gave us a price. The price was much
more than we wanted to spend and we got cold feet and called
off the deal. Right after that the builder took it off the market.

Now it's Spring and my wife loves the location and wanted to approach
the builder again. I called the builder and he was planning to develop
something later this year but would work with us if we are interested.
I didn't come out and ask him but I think (since he is not listing it)
he
won't
have a realtor involved. We never kept the agreement we signed with
our realtor so we don't know whether she has any right to compensation
since she was involved earlier. She is our friend and I don't want to
stiff
her, but if the builder isn't using an agent... can she expect
compensation?

If she is your friend, and you want to do the right thing, then you should
call her, explain the situation, and ask her to go over the agreement
with
you. It probably covers this situation one way or the other; as it
represent your agreement with your friend, you should do whatever you had
previously agreed.


Andrew,
Thanks for the quick reply. The realtor is our friend and we are not going
to
try and get out of something we agreed to. The point is the Seller
(builder)
WAS going to pay the commission. Now the builder WON'T be using a realtor,
does that mean we have to pay the commission or we have to approach
the builder (which really means us since he'll up the price) has to pay her
commission? I am not sure how many months we signed this exclusive right
to represent (I think it was late August) so that make 6 months. [I am
kicking
myself for tossing the agreement right now! ] I guess even if the
agreement
is in force we can negotiate with her since she will be selling our house
for around ($450K) for a nice commission. We have nothing signed on
that but she knows we will use her for the sale since she did the last two
for us. Furthermore, this is THE house we want to build (~$570K) and
since the builder owns the lot we can't go around him and likely we
won't buy it if we have to pay our realtor 2.5% of that !
Thanks for your help.