Estate Agent tricks and the OEA

tldkid · 4 January 2009 at 2:51PM

Buyer Beware- Romans Estate Agents told me (the buyer) that an empty property was being sold to fund a retirement/nursing home for the seller. They did not reveal that the house was under probate (the owner had died) until my solicitor found out a month later. I was under a deadline to sell my own so had to go with it. Pity that I had already lost other potential properties in the original decision based on their deceit. The Ombudsman awarded me half the costs incurred in temporary rent but beware, the OEA appears biased towards its members. They did not make it clear about all the evidence they needed and so when I submitted it they said, oops, too late even though they had not reached their decision. Romans admitted that they did not mention the probate because 'it would have compromised their negotiation'.

icebergx · 4 January 2009 at 3:34PM

I don't agree with them lying but they do have to get the best offer/price for the property for their vendors. That's who's interest they're acting in.

Most people who find out a property is a repo/probate see it as a means to get a property cheaper than they otherwise would have. Would you have paid the same price if you'd known?
If it was yours or your grand parents' estate, you'd want the agent to do the best for you/them wouldn't you?

Darth_Marty · 4 January 2009 at 3:42PM

Also probate valuations are considerably less than normal market valuations so theres every chance you got the property at a real steal anyway.

What exactly is the problem for you in all this?

tldkid · 4 January 2009 at 8:24PM

The problem is that probate means the property cannot be sold until it becomes the legal property of the next of kin. There may be legal complications such as contested wills and so on. In other words, it is nobody's property to sell and so the buyer may be hanging on forever. There is also no way the buyer of my house in the chain would have agreed to wait on a probate.

The honest thing would have been for the inheritors to wait until it was theirs to sell. It can be argued that they wanted a head start but it should have been revealed and nobody is forcing them to take a low offer in the meantime, right? In this case, it wasn't revealed as a probate so a low offer was not negotiated.

My problem is that I had to decide between this property and a genuine end-of-chain property and I would have chosen the latter if I'd known.
I had 3 months to find a property of which 1 month was stolen by this deceit and by then, the valuation, solicitor, mortgage company, the chain have all been involved.

My point is that this action is seen as normal in the industry. When I polled all the estate agents in the area to to if they would reveal probate, only one - Henley's - replied to say they would.

Darth_Marty · 4 January 2009 at 10:52PM

Fair enough, if time is a factor then i see why you are aggrieved. In my somewhat limited experience of probate sales there hasnt really been a time delay as usually things get tied up during the "normal" sale timeframe.

Hope things work out ok for you.

geoffky · 4 January 2009 at 10:56PM

This is why they are called lying thieving scum who would gas the mothers to get a sale..and all with no needed qualifications even a traffic warden can become one and sell a 1mill pound house the next day....

Darth_Marty · 5 January 2009 at 12:27AM

geoffky wrote: »

This is why they are called lying thieving scum who would gas the mothers to get a sale..and all with no needed qualifications even a traffic warden can become one and sell a 1mill pound house the next day....

wow, what bitterness I detect! What do you do for a living then Geoff?
And have you ever sold your house?

I would imagine a good degree of stupidity and lack of knowledge went into your last post.

ha ha internet warrior.

icebergx · 5 January 2009 at 1:49AM

geoffky wrote: »

This is why they are called lying thieving scum who would gas the mothers to get a sale..and all with no needed qualifications even a traffic warden can become one and sell a 1mill pound house the next day....

How about the Bankers who've helped to cause so many problems to the economy, Polititians who send people to war on false pretenses and lawyers who chase people to claim money for any injury under the sun? They all have qualifications but I wouldn't tar them all with the same brush. 99% of these people do a good job and people should be open-minded enough to realise this can apply to all EAs.

Geoffky, you're an idiot.

I fully appreciate the OPs situation, I agree that it's wrong that this state of affairs was allowed to occur but, in the same way that lawyers and doctors are bound by confidentiality and to follow clients instructions, EAs must do the same. They are working for the vendor. I'm not sure if the Property Misdescriptions act covers this area but I'd imagine it would.
Hope everything works out for you.

david29dpo · 5 January 2009 at 8:43AM

I have a probate sale which has been going on for 2 years due to a contested will but i knew from the start. In that time the price has dropped (a lot) and the house is slowly falling down. I think the buyer should be told at the beginning.