Crooked EA and friends

IN_LIKE_EVERYONE_ELSE!

A friend has just had his house repo'd last June local EA valued at £350k just sold as a repo at £303k. He is convinced EA did not properly market the house or fully disclose all offers. The difference to an EA in commission on a house at £350K and a house at £303K aint a lot, however a £5k + backhander from a mate or a landlord would put a smile on his face.
Mortgage company have also sent a final balance for the repo and the arrears BEFORE the sale has completed! Are they pyskick? (phoenix nights)Cheek.
Difficult to prove but bloody annoying. Anybody else had a similar experience?

Lil_Dee_2

I've had the opposite situation occur....when I purchased my last property, it was a repossession. The going rate for the house style at the time was approx. £48-49k. I paid £43k The bank/building society that were selling the property didn't look so much at making a profit, all they wanted was to cover their costs, and get rid. I was lucky in that I was ready to proceed, no chain etc. so I was able to bully them a little into taking a low offer...I started at £41k and worked my way up.

There was another bidder involved, but we both started at the same level, and the building society went with me as I was able to proceed quicker than the other party. Oh, and I bought through an Estate Agent, I didn't deal direct with the building society, if that's how it sounds.

Maybe the EA was told to accept the first bid that covered the repossessors costs ?

AndrewSmith

Why would the EA not forward higher bids? The difference in commission on average would be £750.00, so it is a significant amount.

He can only forward bids that he gets. If he had none higher than that amount then what is he supposed to do?

With a reposession house the EA has very strict guidelines he has to work to. He has a legal obligation by contract to attain the highest possible offer for his client, the selling Lender. The property is then put under 7 day notice in the local papers stating the highest offer recieved so there is nowhere for the Agent to hide. It is ultimately the decision of the reposessing lender whether they accept the highest offer to date following the 7 day public notice. Again, nothing the agent can do about it.

Regarding the final settlement figure:

It is normal for the lender to calculate the redemption figure in advance and assume full repayment by a certain date. It is very easy for them to calculate. If they had over-estimated this figure the difference would be passed back to the vendor, or used to cover the legal costs of reposession.

With ever tightening regulation on Property Transactions and increased accountability it is not worth any 'sane' estate agent taking a 'backhander' for an amount such as 5k, when the real cost to the agent if found out could be far greater and life long.

With public 7 day notice's stating the highest offer to date it really isn't possible for the agent to pass on lower offers and take cash bribes. If he did the person who had offered higher would easily find out wouldn't he?

Andy

lush_walrus

Andrew has pretty much said it all, but out of all the occassions that an EA may try to do something dodgy, this really isnt the time they would take that risk - AT ALL.

A repossession property (these days, now that legislation insists that the banks sell the property for the going rate, rather than just to reclaim their outstanding money), is most EAs idea of a nightmare, believe me. The reason is simple, paper work associated with selling repossessions is tremendous. Every 7 days a list of viewers (with their full details) has to be faxed through to the lender, the banks have written into the contract that the property must be advertised (and often stipulate additional advertising to a normal property), a lot of the time the previous owner has taken everything and the kitchen sink from the property, often wrecking fittings, leaving the house filthy etc all in revenge of being repossessed. As the property is under control of the bank all viewings have to be escorted by the EA (meaning that the EA has to have staff out of the office for additional time).

I personally will not deal at all with repossessions. In staff hours with regards to admin, additional advertising, and hours out of the office, it is just not worth it.

Anyway, Andrew has given you more than enough information, unfortunately as much as people like to build conspiracy theories around EAs I am 99.9999% sure in this case it will all have been carried out above board.

silvercar

There is always (repossessions or otherwise) a balance between accepting an offer and holding out for a better price.

When selling your own house you can make emotive decisions. A bank will only look from a financial perspective, but at the end of the day the people repossessed couldn't manage their own finances. Although people might be upset at their former home being sold for less than they thought it worth at least the outstanding debts on the property will be closed. As others have said repossessed homes have generally not had much maintanance spent on them in recent times.