Court Opinion

ID: 9626654
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:20:36.085142+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:07:41.676747
License: Public Domain

Eggleston and Buchanan, JJ.,
dissenting.
We are not here dealing with a brokerage contract but with a contract for the sale and purchase of real estate. Under the terms of its contract the purchaser “grants to the seller and/or its assigns the exclusive right to obtain a purchaser, at the brokerage rates, which may then be in effect”. (Emphasis added). The contract recites that the purpose of the provision is “to maintain the, character” of the neighborhood in which the property is located; or, in other , words, to insure to the seller the right to endeavor “to obtain a new purchaser” who may be acceptable to it.
The contract contemplates that in effecting such a sale the seller (Tyler Corporation) will employ the services of a real estate broker at the current brokerage rates. But it does not say that in making such sale the Tyler Corporation or any other unlicensed realtor is to act as broker. The presumption is, of course, that the contract contemplates that it will be performed in a lawful manner, that is, by employing the services of a duly licensed broker.
But even if the contract here be treated as a brokerage contract, the majority opinion improperly applies the license statute to it. It seems clear from the terms of the statute that it is to be applied only to acts done under such a contract; that is, a real estate broker is not required to have a license when he enters into a contract to sell for the owner, but only when he does sell or offer to sell. This is the vital distinction between this case and the cases in which we have held that commissions could not be recovered because the broker had no license when he made the sale. v-
Here the owner of the land sold it to a buyer tinder an *327agreement that if the buyer desired to sell the property within five years, the seller, or the seller’s assignee, should have the exclusive right to make the sale. The law does not require a license to enter into such a contract.
Code, 1942 (Michie), section 4359(77) makes it unlawful for a person to act as a real estate broker without a license. Section 4359(78) defines a real estate broker to include a person who sells, or offers for sale, or negotiates the sale of, real estate, for others; and one act of such selling, or offering to sell, makes a person a real estate broker who is required to' have a license.
Unless a person acts as a real estate broker, as so defined, there is no requirement that he have a license. The statute does not require that a person who may by possibility become a real estate broker shall have a license. It is only the act of selling or offering to sell that requires a license.
What the contract in this case did was to give the Tyler Corporation a right to sell, if and when, within the five years, the buyer decided to sell. The Tyler Corporation did not sell or offer to sell the property. Before the sale was made it had transferred its right to the plaintiff, as defendants had contracted it might do. The plaintiff then had a real estate broker’s license and was qualified to make the sale when the defendants made it for themselves, in violation of their agreement.
If the contract sued on here was illegal when made because the Tyler Corporation was not then licensed as a real estate broker, it would, seem that of necessity the Tyler Corporation was amenable to the punishment prescribed by section 4359(88) for making the contract. It is somewhat more than doubtful that a warrant or indictment against it for that would long be entertained in any court.
In Massie v. Dudley, 173 Va. 42, 3 S. E. (2d) 176, quoted from in the majority opinion, the suit was for commissions on a sale actually made, claimed by a broker who had no license when the services were performed. The brokerage contract was made some eight years before the services were *328performed for which the suit was brought. The case was not decided on the ground that the broker must have had a license for each of those eight years, but the opinion states that he “had none during the period in which the negotiations hereinafter described' were conducted.” The plaintiffs there had no cause of action until they undertook to perform the contract, and when they did they had no license. It was the consequent illegality of what they did under the contract that made the contract unenforceable; not the fact that they had no license when the contract was made.
If a person makes a contract to sell another’s property when and if such other person decides to sell, he is not required to have a real estate broker’s license to make the contract. He is only required to have it if he makes sale or offers to make sale. If he procures a license after he makes the contract, but before he sells or offers to sell, he then violates no law when he makes a sale. Such is the meaning of the statute, as we read it, and so it has been held, in applying similar statutes, by all the authorities that we have seen. See Calhoun v. Banner, 254 N. Y. 325, 172 N. E. 523; 12 C. J. S., Brokers, sec. 67, pp. 155-6, and cases there cited; 8 Am. Jur., sec. 154, 1949 Cum. Supp., p. 49; Anno., 169 A. L. R. at p. 779.
If the plaintiff is otherwise entitled to recover, which it has not had opportunity to show because the court dismissed its notice of motion without hearing evidence, then we do not think recovery should be denied solely because the Tyler Corporation did not have a real estate broker’s license when ■.the contract was made.