Do I need to pay EA fee?

Bear_family

To cut a long story short, we were buying an executor sale but have had to go back on the market again as a buyer further down the chain dropped out.

To avoid waiting and possibly not selling at all, our seller has offered to do a house swap and buy our property to rent out so we can buy the executor sale (her parents' place) and we just pay the difference. She was going to be buying a B to L anyway with the proceeds of the sale.

If it all goes ahead do I need to pay our estate agent?

Any info would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Bfx

PasturesNew

It is 99% most likely that you will have to pay the full EA fees.

Every contract is different though, read through yours and type up here the bit about when you have to pay.

RabbitMad

I doubt that you will have to pay the EA fees as your vendor offered to "buy" your house from you and the EA selling your house didn't introduce you to them.

Bear_family

Hi,

Sorry for the delay. From looking at the threads it seems this question is asked quite a lot.

Our contract says:
Our fee is due when a purchaser is introduced directly or indirectly by Us or another agent during our marketing Period of Sole Agency agreement and when that purchaser unconditionally exchanges a contract to purchase a property.


I'm thinking we do need to pay them...although we've only been on with them 2 weeks!

Any advice appreciated.

Thanks,

BFx

RabbitMad

If that's your wording I'd say no fee to pay.

The purchaser hasn't been introduced directly by them.
The purchaser hasn't been introduced indirectly by them
The Purchaser hasn't been introduced by another agent.

The fact is you will not be selling your property anyway so how will they be able to calculate their fee?

duchy

Unless your estate agent introduced you to your new buyer OR you signed a sole agency agency agreement with then and agreed the sale during the sole agency period you should be OK but with a fairly large sum at stake and as you'll have engaged a solictor anyway I'd get them to run an eye over the small print.

Bear_family

Thanks Rabbitmad and Duchy.

I will get my solicitor to look over it.

Our estate agent definitely didn't introduce us to our potential buyer, nor indirectly introduced them.

We did meet them through another agent indirectly as we are buying their house that they had on with an EA?

We are selling our house so i don't really understand the last bit, Rabbitmad?

We are in a sole agency agreement with our estate agent, Duchy. The sale hasn't yet been agreed but if it does go ahead it would be in their contract period.

Bfx

RabbitMad

You are not "selling" your house you are "swapping" it for the the other house and some cash.

Most estate agency fees are x% of the sale price. so what is your sale price? one could argue that it is the price you were going to pay for the house you are buying minus what you are now paying. But as you hadn't sold you might have had to reduce your asking price and then would have to ask the vendor to reduce theirs etc.

I think if you are quite clever here you might be able to do something to avoid taxes / your vendor to avoid some of their estate agency fees. Plus I'm thinking that I read somewhere that stamp duty wasn't required on house swaps but good old gordon might have put an end to that. I think you / the person you are buying from need to take proper advice on this though especially as the person taking your house needs to have the correct value assigned to it for future CGT purposes

Doozergirl

If you have a sole agency agreement then you should not have to pay their fee.

It is only if they have sole selling rights (which isn't sole agency) that you have to pay a fee. A sole selling rights would not use the words 'sole agency' and would refer to the property being sold by anyone, not just other agents.

Your buyers introduced themselves to you as potential buyers. No fee payable. Agent may well argue the toss but you don't owe them.

chickmug

As an EA I agree with Doozergirl you will not owe any fees. But why not ask your EA and see what reply they give.