Holly Freas, Market Center Administrator at KW New Orleans, on what “fully executed” actually means, why missing signatures are killing deals, and what every agent needs to check before a contract leaves their hands.
A fully executed real estate document is one that contains every required signature from every party to the contract, every printed name, and every required date—with nothing left blank. In Louisiana, where co-ownership among spouses, family members, and heirs is common, that means confirming who holds title before anyone signs anything. A single missing signature from a co-owner or heir is enough to stop a transaction at closing.
Why It Matters
A contract that looks complete on the surface can unravel the moment a title search turns up a name that isn’t on the signature page. It happens more often than most agents expect—and when it does, the fallout touches everyone: the buyer waiting to move, the seller who thought the deal was done, and the agent who has to sort out what went wrong with an earnest money deposit caught in the middle.
Holly Freas, Market Center Administrator at KW New Orleans, sees every contract that crosses the brokerage’s desk. Her view is operational, not theoretical: she watches submissions come in incomplete, flags the problems, and tracks what happens when agents don’t catch missing signatures before a deal gets to closing. The pattern she’s identified is consistent enough that she brought it up as one of the most pressing broker topics the office needed to address directly.
The State of Play
Incomplete contract submissions are a persistent problem at brokerages across the country, but the issue takes on particular weight in Louisiana. As a civil law state—distinct from the common-law states that make up the rest of the country—Louisiana has specific rules around co-ownership, community property, and succession that directly affect who must sign any real estate contract. Here’s what agents need to keep front of mind.
We are getting a lot of documents that are getting submitted, and they are not fully executed.
— Holly Freas, Market Center Administrator, KW New Orleans
The Succession Problem
In Louisiana, property passes through succession—the state’s civil law process by which ownership transfers from a deceased person to their heirs—and that process can leave ownership fractured among multiple family members who may not all be easy to identify or locate. An agent who takes a listing without confirming the full chain of ownership is building on sand.
Holly Freas described a recent case that captures the risk plainly: an agent secured a listing agreement, believed they had the right seller, and moved the transaction forward. Only when the parties were approaching closing did it emerge that the property had passed through succession to multiple heirs—and one of those heirs had no interest in selling. With a co-owner refusing to sign, the sale could not close. That left the buyer’s earnest money deposit in a complicated position: KW New Orleans could not simply release it back to the buyer until the contractual obligations on the seller’s side were properly resolved. A straightforward transaction became a problem that required careful legal navigation to untangle.
The lesson isn’t abstract. Before taking any listing—particularly on a property that has changed hands through inheritance—an agent should pull the public records, confirm every name on title, and make sure every one of those people is ready, willing, and able to sign. That’s not extra work; it’s the baseline. You can find additional guidance on Louisiana property law and agent responsibilities in the KW New Orleans Learning Center.
I would probably say more than that because we got to take in consideration we have a lot of husbands and wives, or a lot of family members, or just friends who own property together.
— Holly Freas, Market Center Administrator, KW New Orleans
What Agents Get Wrong—and How to Fix It
The errors Holly Freas sees most often aren’t complex. They’re basic: one buyer signed when two were required, a date field left blank, a co-seller whose name appeared on title but nowhere on the contract. Most of them could be caught with a two-minute review before the document goes out.
The fix is a discipline, not a skill. Before sending any document to a client for signature, an agent should confirm that every required field is pre-filled where possible and that the client understands which lines require both parties’ signatures. When the document comes back, the agent reviews it again—not just for signatures, but for dates and printed names. “Before you send them to your client, the information is there, or when you get them back from your client, that all the required fields are fully signed, dated, and that kind of thing,” Freas said. That process takes minutes. Fixing a broken closing takes weeks.
On the buyer side, the same logic applies. If two people are purchasing together, both must sign. If the buyer is an entity, the agent needs to know who speaks for that entity and confirm it in writing before the offer goes in. The same due-diligence habits that protect a listing protect an offer. Agents interested in building these practices into their everyday workflow can connect with others who have done the same through the KW New Orleans agent network.
It’s extremely important. I mean, you do your due diligence, especially on listings.
— Holly Freas, Market Center Administrator, KW New Orleans
Common Questions
Holly Freas isn’t warning agents about edge cases—she’s describing what she sees on a regular basis: contracts submitted with missing signatures, deals moving toward closing while a co-owner’s name sits unsigned on the paperwork, and earnest money deposits caught in limbo because the listing side wasn’t fully executed before it launched. The specific culprits are co-ownership (spouses, family members, heirs), Louisiana’s succession process, and LLC structures that require a look at the operating agreement before anyone signs. Every one of those is discoverable before the contract is written—if the agent does the title check first. That’s the habit that separates deals that close cleanly from deals that become problems.
About this series. KW New Orleans hosts regular conversations with the professionals shaping how real estate gets done in our market—agents, administrators, and leaders who work the deals every day. These sessions surface the practical, on-the-ground knowledge that doesn’t always make it into the training manual.
KW New Orleans is built around agents who know their contracts, protect their clients, and close deals that hold up. If you’re ready to work alongside a team with that standard—we’d love to talk.