House for Sale NOT !!!!!

pippins_2

Hi everyone.... new to this but really need some advice..
Estate Agents have been advertising our house for sale for the last 10 months, even though we advised them that we had decided not to market our house and we did not sign a contract with them.. We have only just found out this as a surveyor who came to survey our property for a remortgage made a remark about our property being for sale and our father also saw that it was in the Local Propety Echo this week... Have spoken with the agents whom have said that there has been a mix up and would speak to their staff to get some answers, we have not heard anymore from them since... We are now about to put our house on the market and are worried that people will have seen our property up on the market for the last year and may think there is a problem with it as it looks like it has struggled to sell!!! I now work for an Estate Agents and my boss has advised me that we may have to look at lowering the price of our property to gain some interest even though we have made vast home improvements in the last year.. Can any one advice us as to whether the agents are liable to any come back or has any one else had this experience and if so what was the outcome......Thanks...

Barney088

Never heard of anything so daft in all my days, they must be a really crappy estate agent if it's taken them a year to get you no viewings!

I don;t know about the law on this but I'd be really angry with them if they'd marketed my house without knowing it. Did you talk to them and discuss the options of marketing the property?

I guess the "contracts" that you didn't sign will have the agreement to advertise and as you didn't sign them they will have no rights as far as this goes. Surly an estate agent claiming to have "1000's of properties to sell" will be liable if some of them are not really for sale?

Ask them for your file and see how many times it has been advertised over the last year and perhaps make a call from there. If it was only once then there should be no issue, but if it was more than that I guess you've got a good fight on your hands.

Weird

jockettuk

nothing stopping you putting your house up for the value you think its worth and if no viewings drop the price.. i would imagine the people that might have seen your house up for sale/no sale lol would have bought somewere by now so the people who will be looking probably wont even know it was supposidly up for sale for over a yr and if asked tell them the story..

good luck

pippins_2

Thank you for your replies..

Never heard of anything so daft in all my days, they must be a really crappy estate agent if it's taken them a year to get you no viewings![/I]

The Agents are RE/MAX [/U]

Did you talk to them and discuss the options of marketing the property?[/I]

Yes, we did back in March 05...but wrote to them a week later stating that we had decided not to go ahead with the sale due to me starting work for a different local estate agents, as it could be a conflict of interests....We also decided that we were going to pursue an idea of getting planning permisssion on our garden..

Ask them for your file and see how many times it has been advertised over the last year and perhaps make a call from there. If it was only once then there should be no issue, but if it was more than that I guess you've got a good fight on your hands.

Husband rang on Monday and did a secret shop on them, during the conversation they confirmed they were selling our property, it has been on the internet since Mar 05 and appearing every 4 weeks in property guide..

claz

i would really go and take legal advice on this because as you didn't sign anything i they are marketing your property illegally

it will be worth speaking to a solicitor if it affects how well your property sells when it is officially on the market

of course you will never know how much it will or won't affect the sale

silverbirch_3

Had this happen to us, we had dixon's down to look at our house when we were thinking of selling, did not sign any contracts, and a few weeks later our house appeared in property pages of local paper. We contacted them, they apologised and promised to remove house from there books, then a month later a friend of my son told him our house was on the internet. We checked and sure enough our house was listed on rightmove complete with a picture so the agent must have returned to take the picture when we were out as none were taken when he visited us. Several weeks of phoning and letter writer later our house was still listed and kids were worrying as they thought we were lying about not moving house. Finally got the house removed by complaining direct to rightmove.