A California broker riding on the North Fork stared at a roadside real estate broker sign, turned around to her sister and exclaimed, "What the Hell is a co-exclusive?"

Property listed with Sotheby's Real Estate

What is it? react to it and tell us about it was what we asked our industry list. We received two responses, the California take and a "What is it you want to know?" We told and never heard from him again. In fact we never heard from anyone?

Something is wrong here. Co-exclusives did not exist in the olden times when I was in the business. What made it happen? This shared/unshared? This classic oxymoron! Hmmm! And a Hmmm! And a Hmmm!

Hidden purpose? What does it mean? How does it work? Really and/or supposed to?

Our interest was mildly triggered by the following tale from veteran broker and Office Manager, Tom MacNiven, Prudential Douglas Elliman, East Hampton Village. (Further alerted when no one responded.)

"I sent you this…[letter from a satisfied client]…because, while not your "typical" co-exclusive story it does point out that you are better off with one good agent than two or three poor ones."

(A self evident truth, we will pass on.)

Apparently Lori MacGarva, "the hardest working agent" Mr. MacNiven has ever known, shared a listing, a co-exclusive with an agent at Sotheby's and, according to MacNiven, "ended up working tirelessly for very little money to make a deal for her sellers. She did not bring the buyer...a third agency did...so the commission was spread pretty thin. Lori went above and beyond to make sure a very difficult deal closed while her co-exclusive agent did nothing."

The letter Prudential manager MacNiven enclosed was one sent was to Sotheby's - the co-exclusive firm - by the seller after the home was sold praising Lori's considerable work in accomplishing the deal. In an exceptional move, the seller closed the letter with the following request: "Suffice it to say I have never had someone work so diligently on my behalf and I am hoping, in the spirit of what feels appropriate, that Sotheby's might agree to give her a larger commission for all of her efforts. Please let me know if you agree and if so how we could move to make this happen. Maybe a 60 / 40 split to compensate her for all of her hard work and going above and beyond."

Not sure what impact that had, however, the story ends, well. Those same sellers (and there are two) are each working to buy exclusively with Lori MacGarva to buy a new house.

So, I asked about co-exclusives in the light of this confusing who had what, to do what, to whom confusion. And got…well I've already told you that, and, I remembered the California real estate broker. Now, rewind please to "What made it happen? This shared/unshared?" This classic oxymoron!

How can a word meant to leave everyone/everything out be coupled with the prefix "co-" as in cooperate with exactly what was meant to be left out, i.e., excluded? An exclusive may reasonably co-brokered, as in we have the listing, bring us a seller, but co-excluded? Yes, my instincts tell me this was a way to separate the industry and the hot shots, the first raters, the A-list, with the exclusives and now let's team up together and make up this term "co-exclusive" which excludes all the rest of the "not worthy to get it" that is to say at best the B-teams…that is to say, as well, the potential competition.

Multiple Listing Services - which I suspect this was also meant to keep at a distance as more and more people from away bought and sold and were used to and familiar with MLS "up-Island" and the rest of the nation – are at least more straightforward, we, one firm, has the listing, and all you second-rate guys out there can gladly work for us and sell it.

This I can tell you, the term co-exclusive did not exist before the 90s on the Eastern End of the Island.

So now that I have said my piece, maybe some of you out there can disagree, challenge, tell my why. More interesting than the packaged releases from one person representing 400 brokers, telling how great business is. However, the most salient question here is how do co-exclusives benefit the client, which is mostly (unless representing buyer) what real estate is all about?

Or after all, the devious hypotheses, was this sometime long ago accommodation once made for an ambivalent client who had two buddies in real estate, but in different offices, and who wanted to both list his home and keep his friends, so there was the compromise, that then grew and grew and grew?

East End real estate, a strange and opinion lacking – Wait! Wait! There were professional opinions lurking on a "selling" price for a particular building lot. One broker told us around $900K, another over a million, the last $685,000 only if the seller was lucky - yes, a strange type of business.