On Reliance Benefit And Anticipatory Benefit Of Sales Contract Of Commercial Housing

In China, reliance benefit and anticipatory benefit are the most active in the field of the Contract Law. This paper tries to define reliance benefit and anticipatory benefit on the basis of relative theories in common law system, civil law system and our country. Reliance benefit is the benefit that the party loses when the party trusted the effectiveness of the contract and paid for it, but the contract turned out to be invalid because of the other party’s behavior which was in violation of the honesty and credibility principle. The benefit includes what the party has paid for contract and the opportunity for making another similar contract. Anticipatory benefit is the benefit that the party wants to get from the fulfillment of a contract, including the performance interest and prospect interest.Commodity house purchase and sales contract is one of the typical sales contracts. Most commodity house purchase and sales contracts consist of standard treaty wording made by national or local administrative department and supplementary terms agreed by both parties. The amount of money concerning commodity house transaction is usually so large that a thorough interest protection system is in great need.The damage behaviors happen in different stages of commodity house purchase and sales contract would cause different liabilities for damage. Vendee or vender who has one or more actions of the four kinds of contracting negligence should compensate for reliance benefit. Vendee or vender who has nonperformance should compensate for anticipatory benefit, but the precondition is to make the relationship between anticipatory benefit and prospect interest, and the relationship between anticipatory benefit and penalty clear. This paper thinks that under the condition of pre-contract default, reliance benefit of commodity house purchase and sales contract, instead of anticipatory benefit of pre-contract, should be applied to protect the benefit of the observant party. Besides, reliance benefit also applies for liability for breach of contract.Reliance benefit of commodity house purchase and sales contract covers cost of contracting, cost of performance preparation, cost of performance and relative interests, and loss of contracting opportunities. The amount is regulated by the maximum limit rule, fault-balance rule, mitigation rule and reasonable expense rule. Anticipatory benefit ranges from cost of contracting and performance to earnings of dealing with the commercial residential building. The amount is regulated by full compensation rule, predictable rule, fault-balance rule, mitigation rule and substitutability rule. Taking the price, time and location into consideration, the specific amount could be calculated by making use of the objective calculation method, and subjective calculation method as assist.