Occasionally agents need to leave town for brief periods for personal reasons, vacations, family emergencies etc. Although you are in business for yourselves, it is important that you realize that Buyers and Sellers with whom you are dealing are doing business with Buy the Beach Realty Group, and they are entitled to have someone available to handle their business affairs etc. It is simply not acceptable to announce that you are leaving town and that your pending deals and listings can be left to handle themselves. Agents are responsible to arrange, in writing, the specifics of who will cover each listing and or pending sale transaction and to submit a mutually signed agreement to Ruth Carrington for review prior to departure.
Agent vacation cover arrangements are not made by clerical staff. Notifying office staff of your intended disappearance is not acceptable as a substitute for following the procedures stated below.
Obviously the circumstances may differ for each individual situation so I do not wish to force everyone to make similar financial arrangements etc. On the other hand, here are some guidelines that you can use to work these affairs out with your colleagues.
An agreement must:
- Indicate the exact dates that you will be away and when you will return.
- State the specific percentage of your commission or other basis for compensating the agent handling your work.
- State that if you are not back on the date specified, an additional 10% of your commission will be paid to agent covering each week or part thereof that you are late returning to your duties. This condition is intended to protect the agent doing a favor for a colleague from being exploited by someone who has no intention of returning to handle their work but who thinks he/she has bought a “PA” on the cheap.
An Agreement must not:
- No agreement will be accepted that provides for a reciprocal exchange of “covering” for vacations without financial compensation.
- No agreement is acceptable which calls for payment on a “per task” or “per document” written basis. We simply cannot be asked to arbitrate disputes about whether or not some such “task” needed to be performed or “could have waited” etc.
- No agent with less than one full year with the company can be selected to “cover” for another agent unless a specific, written request is made to Ruth Carrington on this at least one full week prior to the beginning of the vacation period.
As Managing Broker, I will try to accommodate your choice of agents and your mutual agreements, However, we reserve the right to review your choices and agreements and to reject any which in our judgment are not suitable. Examples would be someone using a brand-new agent with little experience to handle a pending transaction or an agent without a car to handle a listing outside the local area.
Penalties:
- If you leave town for more than two consecutive days without complying with this policy
or - If you do not submit your written agreement to David deForrest for review at least 72 hours prior to your departure
We will assign them to another agent (or run them ourselves) and will split the commission 50/50 for the first two weeks and 10% additional per week thereafter.
There is no such thing as a transaction or listing which does not have a living, available agent on hand in this company. It is inconsistent with our duty to the public and our standards of professional conduct.