IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jrefec/v4y1991i2p99-125.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Residential Real Estate Brokerage as a Principal-Agent Problem

Author

Listed:
  • Anglin, Paul M
  • Arnott, Richard

Abstract

The authors analyze the terms of the brokerage contract between a house seller and his agent, using the established literature on the principal-agent problem. Considering the influence of moral hazard and adverse selection, they predict a number of features of the contract. Many of these features are not present in observed contracts. To account for this discrepancy, they discuss certain aspects of the real estate market which are not included in the standard principal-agent model but may explain the difference. Standard principal-agent theory neglects important contract design considerations, namely robustness and costs of complexity. In general, the commission contract performs poorly by failing to allocate risk efficiently or to provide agent incentives. It favors established agents and precludes contractual diversity. Finally, they contrast the brokerage contract for real estate with the dealership contract for used cars, but find no compelling answer as to why there are few used house dealers. Copyright 1991 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Suggested Citation

  • Anglin, Paul M & Arnott, Richard, 1991. "Residential Real Estate Brokerage as a Principal-Agent Problem," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 99-125, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jrefec:v:4:y:1991:i:2:p:99-125
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jrefec:v:4:y:1991:i:2:p:99-125. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.