Estate agent fees and shared ownership help

R&C

We put our house on the market with our HA just over 2 weeks ago, they have one month in which to sell and then we can put it on the open market. However, our particular HA are renowned for never getting any buyers, so we figured the month is just dead time and we would put it on the open market at the same time with the condition that if any offers came through the estate agent before our nomination period with the HA had finished, we couldn't accept until after the nomination period was over.

We signed a sole agency agreement with our estate agent, who has sold many shared ownership properties on our estate and knew about our nomination period. Now, much to our surprise, it seems that our HA has found us a buyer The fees to the HA are much less than the agent so we were thrilled, until it dawned on us that we may have to pay the EA too.

We are (clearly ) new to all this, can anyone shed some light on how this works? Will we have to pay the EA aswell as our HA?

Many thanks.

chickmug

Providing you have signed Sole Agency with EA and not Sole Selling Rights and providing the HA don't consider thenseleves as an EA I think you may be safe. However the EA may try it on as many do so ask them to prove how the HA is deemed to be an EA.

R&C

Thank you. I'm expecting the EA to try it on, most definitely. I'm thinking we could lie and say we found the buyer ourselves, and referred them on to our HA. I don't suppose we'd be liable to pay any money then?

chickmug

R&C wrote: »

Thank you. I'm expecting the EA to try it on, most definitely. I'm thinking we could lie and say we found the buyer ourselves, and referred them on to our HA. I don't suppose we'd be liable to pay any money then?

If it is a half decent agent and they have spent nothing surely they will let you off? Goodwill and all that. I would nver have tried to get real money but may have been tempted to ask for costs incurred to that point.

R&C

I'm not sure... this agent seems to be a bit of a money grabber really. They were the only agent out of about 7 who wanted to charge a whopping 2% on the full value of the property, rather than the 40% share being sold. After shopping round we went back to them and they dropped it to 1.5% on our share only. We wouldn't have bothered going back to them at all but they do seem to have the best experience with shared ownership round here. Let's hope they do let us off!