open listing
Open Listing means you allow several estate agents to hunt for a buyer for your property at once, and only the one who actually brings the buyer gets paid.
In plain English
Aunty Ngozi sells fabric at Balogun Market, but she also inherited a plot in Sangotedo that she has been trying to sell for eight months.
Tired of waiting on one lazy agent who kept promising and not delivering, she decided to spread the news everywhere. She told the agent down the road, she told her cousin who does small property deals on the side, she posted the plot in three Facebook groups, and she even mentioned it to a client buying wax prints who happened to own a construction firm.
This is an Open Listing. Aunty Ngozi did not tie herself to one agent with a signed promise of loyalty. Instead, she calmly gave the same job to many people at once, and whichever one of them physically brings a serious buyer who completes the purchase is the only one who earns commission. Everyone else who tried and failed simply gets nothing, no hard feelings, no fee owed.
It sounds fair, and it can work well for a popular property in a hot area, because more eyes searching usually means a faster sale. But it has a real weakness. Agents know that if they spend money and time marketing a plot that is also being pushed by five other people, they might lose the sale to someone else's effort and earn nothing for their trouble. So many serious agents calmly deprioritise open listings and put their real energy into properties where they have an Exclusive Listing instead, where they alone stand to gain.
In the United Kingdom, a landlord selling a terraced house in Leeds might list it with three different high street agents at once under open terms, hoping whichever one sells first wins the small race. It happens, but professional agents there often ask for sole agency precisely to avoid this scramble.
Aunty Ngozi's cousin eventually brings a buyer willing to pay ₦38,000,000 for the Sangotedo plot. The deal closes, and her cousin earns the agreed 5 percent commission of ₦1,900,000. The other four people who had been calmly showing the plot to their own contacts get nothing at all, because they did not close the deal.
Questions people ask
Is Open Listing a bad idea for selling property in Nigeria?
Not bad, just risky. It can widen your reach, but because no single agent is guaranteed a reward, many will not push your property as hard as they would push an exclusive one. It tends to work best for properties that are already easy to sell, like a well located plot in a fast growing estate.
Can I have an Open Listing and still sell the property myself?
Yes, that is actually one of its biggest attractions. Unlike an Exclusive Listing, an Open Listing usually lets the owner sell the property directly to a buyer they found themselves and pay no commission to anyone at all.
How is Open Listing different from Exclusive Listing?
With an Open Listing, many agents can market the same property and only the one who finds the buyer gets paid. With an Exclusive Listing, one agent alone has the right to sell it, so they usually work harder because they know the reward is theirs if the deal closes.
Last reviewed