The Landlord Denied Signing the Agency Agreement — and Still Paid the Full Commission

Background

Our client was a self-employed estate agent working the rental market in Tai Po.

A landlord put a flat up for letting. The two signed a prescribed-form estate agency agreement on simple terms: on a successful letting, the landlord would pay commission of one month's rent — HK$19,800.

Over the next two and a half weeks the agent arranged viewing after viewing. Each one ran the same way: a WhatsApp message proposing a time, a reply from the landlord agreeing to it, then a short exchange afterwards about how it had gone. The last group of viewers agreed to take it. A two-year tenancy was signed in person by landlord and tenant, and the tenant moved in.

Three days later the agent messaged to ask when the commission could be settled. The first reply was that the agent had only shown the flat once, so why charge so much. A few days after that it changed into something else entirely: when did I ever sign that?

By the time the agent came to us he already held everything he needed — the original agreement, dozens of viewing messages, a copy of the tenancy. What he could not get past was a thought: he says he never signed it, so how do I prove that he did?

He denies signing, and says I did too little. Can I still recover?

There are two separate arguments buried in that question, and agents tend to think about them as one, which is why they end up feeling they have no case. Pulled apart, they are nowhere near equal in weight.

The first is whether you have the right to claim at all. The second is how much. Whether the workload was enough belongs to neither.

Commission is set by the terms of the agreement; the law prescribes no rate. If the agreement says commission of one month's rent upon a successful letting, the trigger is the letting — not the number of viewings. So the complaint about a single viewing was not a defence, it was haggling. The dangerous sentence was the second one, because denying the signature attacks the foundation of the claim rather than its size.

What you hold	What it proves	Why it matters
The original prescribed-form agency agreement	A signed contract exists, with the commission stated	Without it, a claim has no clear contractual basis — this is the foundation of everything else
The date on that agreement	The service came after the agreement, not before	Get the order right and the agreement stands up
Dated viewing messages	The landlord knew throughout, and took part throughout	Someone claiming never to have signed struggles to explain weeks of replies
A copy of the two-year tenancy	The agreement's trigger has been met	It turns "I did a lot of work" into "the condition was satisfied" — a completely different argument
The commission formula (one month's rent)	Where the figure comes from	A number on its own is an asking price; a number derived from the contract is a basis

Hearings at the Small Claims Tribunal are informal, and no party may be represented by a lawyer, so the Adjudicator is looking at the records you can produce rather than the legal vocabulary you can deploy. For how these agreements work, how commission is calculated and what each side can argue, see the estate agent commission dispute guide; the whole approach to recovering agent commission sits on that page.

How We Helped

What the agent wanted to do first was prove how much work he had put in. The first thing we did was talk him out of it.

Step	What we did
1	Checked the agreement itself: prescribed form, both signatures and dates present, commission terms clear, validity period unexpired
2	Pulled every viewing arrangement and reply out of WhatsApp and laid them in a single dated line from engagement to signing
3	Reframed the claim from workload to contract terms plus a trigger that has been met, keeping the workload material only as supporting context
4	Drafted the statement of claim so the figure ran straight back to the contract term — one month's rent, HK$19,800 — rather than being quoted independently
5	Rehearsed one scenario with the agent: if the other side denies the signature in the hearing room, do not argue — hand the Adjudicator the agreement and the timeline

The turning point was not proving he signed — it was making him explain

At the hearing the landlord stuck to his script: he did not recognise the agreement, the signature was not his.

That defence failed for a very plain reason: he had far more to explain than the agent had to prove.

The agent produced no handwriting analysis. He produced an agreement and a timeline — engagement signed on this date, viewings arranged from that date, the landlord's replies on those dates, tenancy signed, tenant moved in. The landlord appeared in every row of it.

So the question the Adjudicator asked was no longer whether the signature was his. It was: if you never engaged this agent, why were you replying to his viewing arrangements for two and a half weeks? Why were you present at the signing? No answer came, and no witnesses were called.

A denial that contradicts your own record does not weaken the other side's case — it weakens your credibility. That is especially visible at the Tribunal, where the procedure is informal and the Adjudicator will keep asking until you answer.

What most agents do not know: the EAA has a determination route, but the other side has to walk it

This deserves its own section, because knowing it saves time and stops you waiting for nothing.

Besides filing at the Tribunal, a commission dispute has another route: determination by the Estate Agents Authority. Under section 49 of the Estate Agents Ordinance (Cap. 511) and the related regulation, a licensed agent and a client in dispute over the amount, calculation or payment of commission may refer that dispute to the EAA, and once registered in the District Court the determination is enforceable.

Three doors have to be open at once:

• the amount in dispute is no more than HK$300,000;
• a prescribed-form agreement has been signed by both parties;
• and the decisive one — both parties agree to refer the dispute to the EAA.

Two of the conditions the EAA sets out, in its own words:

雙方已簽訂《地產代理條例》下訂明的地產代理協議 … 雙方同意將爭議交給監管局裁定

In other words, you can propose it, but if the other side declines, the door never opens. Here the landlord was denying he had signed at all, so he was never going to consent to a route that begins by accepting the agreement exists. Rather than spend weeks on it, the agent filed a money claim at the Tribunal — the amount was under HK$75,000, so that route was open.

⚠️ This section describes what two procedures do and when each applies. It is not legal advice. Which route suits your situation depends on your agreement and your facts; we are not a law firm.

Outcome

At the hearing the landlord offered no credible explanation for the signature and produced no document showing he had ever terminated or repudiated the agreement. The Adjudicator accepted that the terms were clear and that the trigger — a successful letting — had been met.

Item	Result
Judgment	In the agent's favour
Amount awarded	HK$19,800 (as stated in the agreement: one month's rent)
Costs	Borne by the landlord
Filing to judgment	About six weeks
Afterwards	Paid within the time allowed by the judgment; no enforcement proceedings needed

On filing fees: under the Judiciary's published schedule, a claim over HK$5,000 and up to HK$25,000 carries a fee of HK$40. Note that legal costs you pay in a Small Claims case are not recoverable even if you win — which is one reason these cases are rarely run with lawyers, quite apart from the fact that the Tribunal does not allow legal representation. For how the claim form is actually completed, see the claim form writing guide.

What made the difference

• Signing the prescribed-form agreement at the outset. It is not paperwork; it is the foundation of the right to claim. Without it, dozens of messages cannot supply a clear contractual basis.
• Keeping the original conversation rather than describing it. Every short confirmation is a record of participation; a summary of it is not.
• Moving from workload to trigger. The agreement pays on a successful letting, and the tenancy copy answers that completely. Arguing about workload means fighting on ground the other side chose.
• Checking early whether the EAA route was actually available. It needs consent. When it is obvious that consent will not come, switching to a claim saves weeks.

Why a similar case works differently

Another case on this site — a freelance designer recovering an unpaid balance — looks like this one on the surface: work done, payment refused. What each had to prove is almost the opposite.

	This case (agent commission)	The designer's balance
Formal contract	Yes — in the form the law prescribes	No — only a quotation email and WhatsApp
The real battleground	The other side denies signing	Proving an unsigned contract existed at all
Most useful evidence	The original agreement plus a dated timeline	The other side still using the work after refusing to pay
How the amount is fixed	Written into the agreement (one month's rent)	Inferred from the quotation and what was delivered
Common misconception	That you must argue how much work you did	That no contract means nothing can be recovered

If your situation is that you have a signed agreement but they deny it or keep stalling, this is your case. If you never signed anything at all, the designer's case will be more useful.