Picture the settlement table. The estate home is sold, the family is relieved, the title agent is walking through the figures — and then one line item stops everything: the real estate commission was never approved by the Probate Court. On a court-supervised sale in Ohio, that isn’t a formality you clean up afterward. Under ORC §2127.28, the commission must be approved by the court before the sale — not at closing.
Most agents never run into this rule, because most sales aren’t probate sales. That’s exactly why it bites. An executor signs a standard listing agreement, the agent runs a standard transaction, and nobody flags that this particular estate is on the Chapter 2127 land-sale path — until the title company does its job at the end, with a buyer waiting and a family counting on proceeds.
Handled correctly, this rule is a non-event. A probate attorney who works these files treats the pre-approval as a matter of course, and the approval gets built into the process when the listing agreement is signed — not discovered at the settlement table. My own sequence on every estate listing: confirm with the estate’s attorney which of the three sale paths applies before anything goes to market, and if it’s the court-supervised path, the commission approval is filed up front.
The larger point isn’t this one statute. It’s that probate sales carry mechanics that ordinary transactions don’t — authority questions, appraisal floors, court timelines, and yes, commission approval. None of them are difficult if they’re handled at the start. All of them are expensive at the end. The executor’s best protection is a team — attorney and agent — who have both seen these files before.
If you’re working with an estate heading toward a court-supervised sale, I’m glad to coordinate with counsel so the listing is built for the court path from day one. And as always, the market analysis that starts the conversation is at no cost.
Andrew Howell, REALTOR® | eXp Realty · (614) 632-5733 · andy@centralohioestateservices.com.
Andrew Howell is a licensed Ohio real estate agent with eXp Realty and is not an attorney. This article is for general informational purposes and is not legal or tax advice; confirm current thresholds and procedures with a licensed Ohio probate attorney.
