What Happens When a Seller Puts on His REALTOR® Hat and the Buyer (Who Is a REALTOR®) Puts on His Lawyer Hat?
This is the story of how a seemingly simple for-sale-by-owner deal turned into a three-day summary trial, featuring three lawyers (all presumably billing by the hour) and one very questionable use of a thumbs up emoji.
Our tale begins in Saanich, where a REALTOR® made an offer to purchase a home—$8,000 below asking. The sellers, who bravely (or boldly) decided to go it alone without a REALTOR®, attempted to counter-offer. Unfortunately, they didn’t know how to edit the standard contract, so they wrote out their proposed changes in an email and returned the contract… unsigned.
The buyer responded by re-sending the offer with the changes incorporated, asking for signatures. He followed up with a text:
MR. ROSS: I’ve sent you an accepted offer on the email thread. Let me know if there’s any questions.
KYLE: 👍
After a bit of back-and-forth about the finer points of contract law and best practices, Mr. Ross, clearly fed up, texted:
MR. ROSS: Man I wish you had a realtor… 😑
And that’s when things went off the rails.
Before the contract could be signed properly, one of the sellers had a medical emergency. The other co-owner then claimed that what was sent over was just a template for what a real contract might look like—something to be discussed further, not agreed upon. In other words: no deal.
Mr. Ross insisted a binding agreement had already been formed. That argument might fly if he was buying a used dirt bike off Craigslist, but in BC, real estate contracts have a higher bar. Thanks to the Law and Equity Act, a contract for land must be in writing and signed to be enforceable. Every law student in BC gets this drilled into them in first-year Property Law.
Still, the buyer pressed on. He argued in court that the seller did sign the contract—by texting a thumbs up emoji in response to his message referencing the “accepted offer.”
The court, unsurprisingly, was not convinced:
“Accepting that a contract can be ‘signed’ by simply sending a thumbs up emoji in a text disconnected from the contractual document itself is no different than accepting that a text containing just the word ‘yes’ constitutes a valid signature. To do so would require treating s. 59(3)(a) of the LEA as if the word ‘signed’ does not appear at all in the legislation.”
So… could a thumbs up emoji placed on the signature line of a contract work? Maybe. But if you’re relying on emoji to close six-figure property deals, it might be time to rethink your strategy.
Moral of the story:
If you’re selling your home, hire a REALTOR®. Better yet, hire one who’s read the Law and Equity Act👍. You might just avoid costly litigation!