ORS 696.845 requires that the Buyer “acknowledge the existing agency relationships, if any,” when signing an offer to purchase. Similarly, the law requires that when a Seller “accepts or rejects an offer to purchase in writing,” the Seller must acknowledge the existing agency relationships, if any. This law is the reason why your Oregon REALTORS® Purchase and Sale Agreements begin with a “Final Agency Acknowledgement,” which can also be found as Form 9.1. The document can be “incorporated into or attached as an addendum to the offer.” Oregon REALTORS® opted to make the Final Agency Acknowledgement a separate attachment, so as to allow the easy addition of more forms (real estate teams are growing, so it would seem). If you incorporate the FAA into an agreement and have it preprinted, the document has to be at the top of the first pre-printed page “separate and apart from the Sale Agreement.”
OREA provided the form and format of the Final Agency Acknowledgement in OAR 863-015-0200, so much of the Oregon REALTORS® Final Agency Acknowledgement was predrafted language that had to be there to comply with administrative rules. The function of the form is to provide the name and relationship of the agents in the transaction; to explain when the agent is an exclusive agent and when they are a dual agent, and to ensure that the Buyer and Seller both understand the representation breakdown of the agents. This is particularly important when the Buyer’s Agent and Seller’s Agent come from the same brokerage, as the Principal Broker will be operating as a disclosed limited agent, despite the two individual brokers individually representing the clients.
It is always worth noting: the Seller is supposed to sign the FAA even if they reject the offer. Signature on the FAA does not count as “accepting” the offer. The Seller’s signature on the Final Agency form is merely a required procedural acknowledgement.