Independent advice for Real Estate Professionals

What you should be checking in a real estate employment contract

Adam Guildford 03 Jan 2017

Insider

What should you ask a potential employer at your real estate job interview.jpgYou’ve done it – you’ve chosen a new agency to continue growing your real estate career. All that’s left for you to do is agree on the conditions and terms, and sign a real estate employment contract.

This is where some agents run into trouble. In New Zealand, it’s common for agents and agency to have a verbal agreement only. While doing business on a handshake helps to broker trust, it can cause issues later on.

Some agencies have run into problems with this, as evidenced by a case heard by the Real Estate Agents Disciplinary Tribunal 2012. While this particular case centred around disgraceful conduct, it highlights a need within the industry for more robust employment contracts to be in place. These contracts can protect both agents and agencies.

The typical real estate employment contract

More and more agencies are offering a contract these days. However, this contract usually only covers the standard New Zealand employment laws, as well as the agency commission structure.

What that contract doesn’t cover is all the items that are important to your career growth: what training and PA support you’ll receive, and what additional resources the agency will cover (for example, business cards or signage). These perks and resources are agreed upon verbally, and never end up written down.

Get it in writing

It’s those vital clauses that you should be getting in writing, in order to ensure that you actually receive all the support you were promised and are entitled to.

This is where working through a real estate recruitment company can be useful. When the company recruits for a position with an agency, they will be able to get all the terms in writing for that position. Here at Real Estate Recruitment, we always work with the agency to ensure all these clauses are in a written contract. This ensures you know exactly what you’re signing up for.

We believe it’s important to have more visibility in the real estate industry, which is why we strongly advocate for visibility in real estate employment agreements. We’ve seen some industry movement on this, but it needs to get a lot better.


If you’re signing up to a new real estate agency, it’s important you carefully check over the contract and ensure all the resources and perks you agreed to are included in the contract. If you went through a real estate recruitment agency like us, they can help you negotiate for a better contract.  

For more information in getting the most out of your real estate career, download our free guide, Most agents sell houses. Top agents build empires.

Most agents sell houses top agents build empires