The Two Contracts

01The appointment — who's working with whom

The top of the Exclusive Right to Buy is the appointment: your buyer's name goes in the buyer blank, your brokerage firm goes in the broker blank. That's the whole handshake — this person has hired this firm to represent them.

Watch out: Use your buyer's full legal name — no nicknames, no shortened names. Their name has to match on every document in the deal, and fixing it later means re-papering.

02Purpose — what you're helping them buy

Describe the hunt: check the property type (residential for most buyers), write the price range you're actually shopping, and name the general area — in the episode's example, a $500–600k search across West Ashley, James Island, and greater Charleston.

This section is quick, but it defines the scope of the representation — keep it honest to what you're really doing for them.

03Length of the agreement

Michael's guidance: six months is the working norm for both the buyer side and the listing side — not textbook, not mandatory, but what you'll usually see. Date the start, compute the expiration, and know that date.

The agreement can only be terminated early by the terms it states — so treat the term you write as real.

04Dual & designated agency — the consent choreography

Before your buyer initials anything about agency, they need to have seen and signed the South Carolina Disclosure of Real Estate Brokerage Relationships form. That form is where dual agency and designated agency are actually explained in depth — the initials here just record the choice.

Then it's two decisions, same pattern each time: not open to it, sign the top portion; open to it, sign the bottom portion and initial. Dual agency matters the day your own listing fits your buyer — every party has to already be on record about it.

You'll meet this exact section again on the listing agreement. Same form language, same top-or-bottom choice, seller's side.

05The brokerage fee — and how it actually gets paid

Write your fee where the contract asks for it — 3% in the episode's example — and have your buyer initial it. This is you and your client agreeing what your work is worth.

How it gets paid: per the training, in today's market it's still the norm that the seller's side ends up covering it — but that's negotiated, not assumed. When you write the offer, a compensation form rides along to the listing agent, and the number on it gets agreed or countered there.

Watch out: You can never go UP later — not on the fee, not on the bonus line. You can always come down. Write the ceiling you'd want, because the day a builder offers more than the number on this page, the number on this page wins.

06The bonus line — new construction money

Charleston runs on new construction, and builders incentivize agents with closing bonuses — $5k, $10k, sometimes far more. The bonus blank sets the maximum bonus you're allowed to accept on top of your percentage.

The trap: write $10,000 and a builder offers $20,000 — your brokerage can only take $10,000 of it. Smaller bonus than the blank? No problem, the extra just never existed. That's why Michael has heard of agents writing $30,000: the blank costs nothing, the ceiling is forever.

07The protection period — you still get paid

If the agreement expires and your buyer, within 30 days, puts a property under contract that YOU showed them — you're still owed the fee from section 7. You did the work; the clock running out a week before they circle back doesn't erase it.

08The pages you read but don't fill

Sections 8 through 14 are the machinery: fair housing, the sex-offender registry note, broker duties and liability, surveillance, your client's right to personal counsel. Nothing to fill out — but read them, because you're the one asking a client to sign them.

The contingency section exists for buyer-side contingencies; in practice Michael almost never fills it on the buyer side.

Watch out: Every single page has signature or initial blocks at the bottom — and the last page is the most forgotten one in the file. E-sign platforms like Dotloop and DocuSign stamp the date and time for you, but they can't sign the block you never assigned.

09The listing agreement — parties, term, and the legal description

Same rhythm, seller's side: owner's name, your brokerage, and the listing period — six months again, and Michael's advice is to actually take the six: in a harsh market you'll want the runway, and in a hot one it won't matter.

Then the property, described the way the county sees it: lot, block, subdivision, address, city, ZIP, county — all pulled from the tax records through the MLS. And the TMS number: copy it exactly. A wrong tax map number means your paperwork describes a property you're not selling.

10List price and YOUR compensation — not the total

The list price gets written twice — in words, then in numbers.

The compensation box is the one that gets miswritten: it takes the LISTING side's fee only. If you're at 3% and a buyer's broker might get 3%, the box still says 3 — never 6. The days of writing a combined total are over.

The listing side has its own protection window (15 days in the version shown) covering deals that close with people you brought in after expiration.

11Buyer-broker compensation — the clean setup

This is the part the industry settlement rewired, and the episode teaches a specific, deliberate combination:

First, in the early compensation section: the owner does NOT authorize the listing broker to offer compensation to other brokerages. Sign that option — you're keeping compensation off the table as a standing offer.

Second, check the concessions box: the owner DOES allow the broker to advertise the owner's willingness to negotiate seller concessions. Not a promise — a willingness to negotiate.

Then the fine print near the signatures is where the real number lives: “Seller will offer buyer broker compensation of ___% with an acceptable offer and gives broker permission to market seller's offer of compensation.” The percentage is the only thing you change. Per Michael, this is the structure eXp teaches — it protects the seller, the agents, and the deal, and it's cleaner than how his previous brokerage papered it.

Watch out: Compensation never goes ON the MLS — you can't publish it there anymore. The setup above means it's disclosed when a buyer's agent asks. That's the line: never advertised on the MLS, always answerable on the phone.

12Owner duties — why you write zero

The owner-duties section has a dollar blank for what the brokerage will spend on the owner's behalf — repairs, utilities, bills. Write $0. The moment you're paying for work on someone else's property, you own a piece of every dispute about it. Stay out of the crossfire.

13MLS, lockbox, surveillance — the operating permissions

The MLS section is the seller authorizing you to actually market: list it on your MLS (Charleston Trident — CTAR — in the episode), syndicate through IDX, run ads, have conversations, work your CRM. There's a signature line for sellers who refuse the MLS — Michael's advice: fight for the MLS every time.

The lockbox checkbox is how showings physically happen: box on the door, key inside, buyer's agents schedule and show without you standing in the driveway.

Surveillance disclosure covers the Ring-doorbell world we sell in: cameras record showings, and this section lets everyone be honest about it.

14Sign-off — and the page-5 initials

Signatures close it out: every owner signs (email and phone welcome), the brokerage and listing agent sign, and e-sign stamps the dates.

One more time, because it's the single most repeated warning in the episode: the initial blocks at the bottom of page 5 of the listing agreement are the most commonly forgotten marks in the whole packet. Get the seller's, then hit it with one last John Hancock of your own.