ΕλληνικάCommentary on judgment 4324/2026 of the Single Member Court of Appeal of Athens (5th Division)
Christos Oikonomakis, Attorney at Law, Chairman, OIKONOMAKIS LAW
Legal review date: 8 October 2026
A question with practical consequences
A real estate broker accepts an instruction by telephone, does the work, finds tenants, the leases are signed, and the principal then refuses to pay. Can the broker fall back on the rules of unjust enrichment and argue that the principal benefited without lawful cause? Judgment 4324/2026 of the Single Member Court of Appeal of Athens answers no, and explains why that answer binds the court rather than leaving it a matter of discretion.
The judgment was published on 4 September 2026. It set aside a first instance decision that had upheld the broker’s claim, and dismissed the claim as legally unfounded. This commentary concerns the legal reasoning and not the individuals: the details of the parties, their representatives and the judicial officers are not reproduced.
The facts in short
The claimant, a broker of civil contracts registered with a professional chamber, maintained that the legal representative of a hotel company had instructed him by telephone to find tenants for two hotel units on Mykonos for the forthcoming summer season. He further maintained that remuneration had been agreed orally and that, as a result of his own efforts, two contracts were concluded: a guaranteed booking contract with a travel agent for total rent of 315,000 euros, and a fixed term lease with a hotel company for total rent of 85,000 euros.
The claim brought was for 15,000 euros on the first contract and 8,500 euros on the second, plus VAT at 24 per cent, that is 29,140 euros in total. Critically, the claimant himself acknowledged in his pleading that the written form had not been observed and that the brokerage contracts were therefore void. On that footing he based his claim on unjust enrichment, seeking the benefit the principal would have conferred had a valid written brokerage contract existed.
The first instance court upheld the claim and awarded 29,140 euros. The Court of Appeal set that decision aside.
The written form in real estate brokerage is constitutive
Part four of Law 4072/2012 (articles 197 to 204), headed “Real estate brokers”, governs the conditions for exercising the profession and the form and minimum content of the brokerage contract. Matters not specifically regulated are governed by articles 703 to 707 of the Civil Code (article 197(3)).
Under article 200(1), a real estate brokerage contract is concluded in writing, and the exchange of signed letters, signed facsimiles or electronic mail messages suffices to satisfy the form. Under article 200(2), the contract must include the details of the contracting parties, their tax registration numbers and the broker’s General Commercial Registry number, and must define the identity of the object of the mediation or of the indication of opportunity, the type of main contract to be concluded, and the amount or percentage of the brokerage fee, which is freely negotiable.
The Court of Appeal restates the settled conclusion: the private document required for real estate brokerage contracts is constitutive and not evidentiary. Its absence renders the brokerage contract void under articles 158 and 159(1) of the Civil Code.
Article 200(9) closes the unjust enrichment route
The decisive provision is article 200(9), under which parties to a contract relating to immovable property are not obliged to pay remuneration to persons who provided brokerage services without the conditions of article 108 and of paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 of the same article being satisfied.
The Court holds that this provision excludes the application of article 904 of the Civil Code. The reasoning is direct: the rules on unjust enrichment apply, in principle, only subsidiarily, where the law does not provide otherwise. Here the law does provide otherwise. If a broker could recover through article 904 what he cannot recover under the contract, the mandatory written form would be circumvented indirectly and paragraph 9 would be left without purpose.
The point, the judgment notes, has been settled by binding authority. The Plenary Session of the Supreme Court held in judgment 1111/1981 that a broker who has not been lawfully appointed has no claim to brokerage rights and no claim under the rules on unjust enrichment. Judgment 1463/2001 held likewise that no claim to remuneration arises from a void brokerage contract, not even under the unjust enrichment provisions. Judgments 1121/2015 and Athens Court of Appeal 3276/2024 follow the same line.
The judgment ties the rule to its purpose: state supervision and protection of the broker’s profession and, by extension, the security of transactions. That purpose is confirmed by article 202 of the same law, which provides criminal sanctions for anyone who performs brokerage acts or holds himself out as a broker without satisfying the conditions of article 198(1) and without registration in the General Commercial Registry.
The distinction worth retaining
The judgment does not abolish unjust enrichment in every brokerage case. It draws a boundary. On what it describes as the sounder view, the non application of the unjust enrichment provisions is appropriate only where the real estate brokerage contract is non existent from the outset, or is void because the person lacked the status of broker or because the contract was not put into written form.
By contrast, articles 904 and following of the Civil Code could apply where a real estate brokerage contract was annulled for defects of will, or was undone by withdrawal. The difference matters in the handling of a case: the question is not simply whether the contract ceased to have effect, but why.
| Status of the brokerage contract | Claim under articles 904 et seq. CC |
| Non existent from the outset | Excluded |
| Void for failure to observe the written form | Excluded |
| Void for lack of the status of broker | Excluded |
| Annulled for defects of will | Available in principle |
| Undone by withdrawal | Available in principle |
The second, free standing basis: no contract existed at all
The Court did not rest on invalidity alone. It also upheld the second ground of appeal, that no brokerage contract existed, holding that the contract was non existent rather than merely void, and that the debt was therefore non existent as well. It based that finding on specific evidence: one of the hotel units already had active leases at the material time; the tenant companies had been working with the principal for years on other islands and were in direct contact with its management; and the correspondence showed that the principal’s legal representative was pointing the claimant towards the tenants’ representatives rather than the reverse.
The Court also noted that the tenant companies had signed property indication agreements with the claimant and had paid his fee, which in the Court’s view showed that he knew how to secure a written indication order when he intended to be paid.
Indefiniteness as a separate ground of dismissal
The judgment also contains a drafting lesson. Where a claimant seeks the defendant’s enrichment directly because of the invalidity of a contract, article 216(1)(a) of the Code of Civil Procedure requires the pleading to set out the facts that entail the invalidity and that make the cause of the benefit unlawful.
In this case, according to the judgment, the pleading did not state the duration and type of the brokerage contract, its object, the fee, or the specific acts that led to the conclusion of the leases. It did not identify when the instruction was given, what period it covered, whether it was an exclusive brokerage, when and to whom the property was shown, or when and in what amount the fee was orally agreed. Those omissions deprived the opposing party of the ability to defend and the Court of the ability to test the substantive merits.
The elements of a claim for brokerage remuneration
With reference to articles 703 to 705 of the Civil Code, the judgment restates the requirements:
(a) a brokerage contract, that is a promise of remuneration for the instruction given to the broker to mediate or to indicate an opportunity for the conclusion of the intended main contract,
(b) brokerage activity in the form of mediation or of the indication of an opportunity,
(c) conclusion of the intended main contract, and
(d) a causal link between the brokerage activity and the conclusion of the main contract.
The causal link is presumed once the brokerage activity and the conclusion of the main contract are proved, and the burden of rebutting the presumption shifts to the principal who disputes it. The presumption, however, concerns only causation. It does not cover the lawful exercise of brokerage activity or the conclusion of the intended contract, which the claimant must prove.
The procedural dimension: transfer on appeal and the reach of res judicata
Under article 522 of the Code of Civil Procedure, the lodging of an appeal transfers the case to the appellate court within the limits set by the appeal and any additional grounds. By virtue of that transferring effect the appellate court may examine all submissions and may hold, even of its own motion, that the claim is legally unfounded, inadmissible or indefinite, notwithstanding that the appellant complains only that the claim was dismissed as unmeritorious.
In that situation article 534 does not permit the reasons of the contested decision to be replaced, because replacement would lead to a different operative part. The contested decision is set aside and the claim is dismissed, and under article 533(1) this may be done without a specific complaint to that effect, provided the outcome is more favourable to the appellant.
The distinction has consequences that are not academic. Dismissal of a claim as legally unfounded is equivalent to dismissal on the merits and, once the judgment becomes final, is covered by res judicata as to the non existence of the substantive right. Dismissal as indefinite, by contrast, is made on formal grounds and produces no such res judicata. For a defendant, the second outcome leaves open the possibility of a fresh and properly particularized claim.
The operative part
The Court accepted the appeal both formally and on the merits, set aside the contested decision of the Single Member Court of First Instance of Athens, retained and tried the case, dismissed the claim as legally unfounded, ordered the return of the appeal fee to the appellant, and ordered the respondent to pay the appellant’s costs of both instances, assessed at 1,200 euros.
What this means in practice
For real estate brokers
- The written contract is not a procedural detail. Without it there is no claim to remuneration, neither in contract nor in unjust enrichment.
- The document must contain the minimum content of article 200(2): party details, tax registration numbers, the broker’s General Commercial Registry number, the identity of the object, the type of main contract, and the amount or percentage of the fee.
- An exchange of signed letters, signed facsimiles or electronic mail messages is sufficient. A written confirmation before work begins takes minutes and settles the point.
- Where the instruction covers several properties or several periods, each object needs its own record. A general reference to a “collaboration” does not satisfy the minimum content.
- An exclusive brokerage contract may not exceed eight months, with a right of extension for a further four months following a unilateral written declaration by the principal. An ordinary brokerage contract, unless otherwise agreed, runs for twelve months with a right of extension for six.
For principals, owners and businesses
- An oral understanding does not create an obligation to pay a brokerage fee in relation to immovable property. An assertion that you benefited does not, by itself, suffice.
- Where the transaction arose from a pre existing relationship with the counterparty, documenting that relationship, through leases, correspondence and earlier contracts, is the strongest defensive material.
- The issue of an invoice by a broker does not of itself create a debt. An invoice presupposes a valid underlying contract.
For drafting the pleading
- In a claim for unjust enrichment based on invalidity, the pleading must set out the facts that establish the invalidity and that make the cause of the benefit unlawful.
- In a claim for brokerage remuneration, the pleading must set out the conclusion of a valid brokerage contract, the brokerage activity, the conclusion of the main contract and the causal link, with dates and figures.
- An alternative basis does not rescue the principal basis where the law expressly excludes it. The choice of basis must be made before filing.
Frequently asked questions
I did all the work and the lease was signed. Am I entitled to nothing?
If the real estate brokerage contract was not concluded in writing, the answer given by the judgment is that no claim to remuneration arises, not even by invoking unjust enrichment. That position rests on a decision of the Plenary Session of the Supreme Court.
Is an email enough?
Article 200(1) expressly accepts electronic mail messages as satisfying the form. The content, however, must cover the matters listed in paragraph 2.
The other side paid a different broker on the same transaction. Does that change anything?
Not as regards your own claim. Each brokerage relationship is assessed on its own and requires its own valid contract.
What if the contract was annulled because I was misled?
Not necessarily the same answer. The judgment draws a distinction: articles 904 and following of the Civil Code could apply where a contract was annulled for defects of will or undone by withdrawal.
Contact
OIKONOMAKIS LAW advises and acts in brokerage fee disputes, in the review and drafting of brokerage contracts and property indication orders, and in hotel and tourism leases.
Email: leads@oikonomakislaw.com
Athens office telephone: +30 21 0360 0036
Contact: oikonomakislaw.com/contact-us/
Disclaimer
This article is provided for information purposes, reflects the framework in force as at the legal review date stated above, and does not constitute legal advice on any specific matter. The outcome of each case depends on its own facts.
The judgment is presented in anonymised form. The names of the parties, their legal representatives, the attorneys of record and the judicial officers, and the file and document numbers, are not reproduced.
Sources
Single Member Court of Appeal of Athens 4324/2026, 5th Division, published on 4 September 2026 (copy held on the firm’s file).
Law 4072/2012 (Government Gazette A’ 86 of 11 April 2012), part four, articles 197 to 204.
Civil Code, articles 158, 159(1), 174, 180, 703 to 707 and 904 et seq.
Code of Civil Procedure, articles 216(1), 522, 525 to 527, 533(1) and 534.
Plenary Supreme Court 1111/1981 NoB 1982.660; Supreme Court 1463/2001, 1121/2015, 922/2019, 1023/2015, 501/2016; Athens Court of Appeal 3276/2024.