Can text messages create binding real estate contracts?

South Carolina real estate practitioners, do you remember that old case from law school where a contract was created on a napkin?  That case made me imagine drunken parties in a bar passing a napkin back and forth as drinks came quicker and caution evaporated.

That simple case is seen in a new light, however, as courts across the country struggle to apply the ancient statute of frauds to the evolving world of electronic communications. Telegrams, faxes and emails have all been found to satisfy the statute of frauds in some situations.

We haven’t seen a South Carolina case on the topic of text messages and binding contracts, but The Southern District of New York and a Massachusetts Land Court recently found that text messages may be sufficient to serve as evidence of the existence of binding agreements between negotiating parties.

In the New York case, the plaintiff real estate broker relied on a series of text messages to show the existence of a binding fee agreement. The court held that the text messages satisfied the writing requirement of the statute of frauds but failed to satisfy the signature requirement.

The Massachusetts court, on the other hand, found that a series of text messages did satisfy the signature requirement of the statute of frauds because a signature of a sort was included within multiple text messages between the parties. Some of the texts contained typed names of the parties beneath the substantive messages.

Real estate practitioners should caution their clients in the use of texts and other non-traditional means of communicating. Advise clients to refrain from typing their names under text messages. Better yet, advise clients to include disclaimers to the effect that no agreement involving the subject matter is final until wet signatures are applied to a physical document.

And even better than that, caution clients that texting and negotiating real estate contracts may be almost as dangerous as texting and driving.

While text messaging can’t be surpassed, at least in 2019, when it comes to speed and efficiency, a new and different level of caution may be needed when engaging in negotiations through such seemingly informal means of communicating.