To those selling in these difficult times Part Deux. AKA sellers support network!

azkaban420

Jackinbox99 wrote: »

Well, interesting weekend for me. I had a final viewing with the previous EA Sunday afternoon and the new EA came around in the morning to take pictures and get the contracts signed for them to start market it.

I informed the new EA that the old EA had a viewing later that day which might result in a sale as this was a 2nd viewing for the lady in question. New EA didnt say this would cause any problems. So I sign the contracts and off he goes. The old EA phones me up the next morning telling me the lady wants to buy and has made an offer.

I speak to new EA to confirm this wont cause any problems with the contract ive just signed, he says no problems as theres a cooling off period. I accept the ladys offer.

Now new EA is demanding a "termination fee" of 250quid for terminating within the cooling off period. We are only talking 2 days into the cooling off period here and he never mentioned this previously.

Now, obviously ive signed the contract, so i`ll have to adbide by what that says, but as I pointed out to the new EA, id have never have signed had I known about this hidden fee. Id have just waited until after id got the viewers feedback and if they werent interested then finalised the process with the new EA.

As anyone else had experience of this sort of thing? I know EA`s are despeate for money these days, but it seems very underhanded to me.

Had I not made the new EA fully aware of the cirumstances, id possibly understand it.

Check the small print - if you have a cooling off period allowed in there without any penalty then they can go stick their termination fee. That's just bang out of order especially if they verbally confirmed it wouldn't be a problem. Speak to the Manager of the branch and give them a piece of your mind, and threaten to go to the local papers for their despicable behaviour.

Feeling grrr for you :mad:

Az

P.S. Apart from the grr, congrats on the offer

Jackinbox99

I`ll be checking the contract later, but im pretty sure it will confirm what their manager has said. Im just so anoyed that they didnt mention this to me and verbally confirmed there would be no problems. Granted I should have double checked the small print on the contract, but foolishly assumed the EA wouldnt be so underhanded.

At least ive an offer on the house now, so this will be the 2nd offer ive accepted. Lets hope this one goes through this time!

tyllwyd

Jackinbox99 wrote: »

...At least ive an offer on the house now, so this will be the 2nd offer ive accepted. Lets hope this one goes through this time!

Congrats on the new offer (and two fingers up at the guy who tried to mess you around). Just being nosey, is the new offer better or worse than the original one you accepted?

Our EA was on the phone yesterday. We've not had any viewings on the house since the end of October, so not exactly a hive of activity!

He said a couple of interesting things - one was that there are offers coming in on properties that they are selling, but the difficult bit is getting both parties to agree on a price, which probably fits with what people are saying on the buyers thread, that buyers want bigger discounts than sellers are happy to agree to. The other is that our house (which is not a first time buyer's house, more a second or third time buyer) is much more likely to sell to someone relocating to the area, because there are very few people upsizing to bigger houses within the local area - again, which fits with the (very few) viewers we've had.

He's recommending we drop the price to below £300K to get viewers through the door. It's not so much that we are at the wrong price for the type & size of house, more that there simply aren't so many people looking in this price bracket. I can see his logic, but we are looking to downsize, and if we end up selling a 4 bed house for the price of a 3 bed, then for us as a family, where's the logic in that? We'd need to buy another 3 bed house, then factor in the costs in buying & moving - we haven't made a final decision yet, but the scales are tipping towards staying where we are and taking the house off the market.

Mazzawa

We need viewers! AAAHHHH!!!

Driving us a little mad. Property has been on market since mid november. We had one viewing as soon as the property went on the market - total time wasters who were just being nosey we think! Since then we've had no viewings although apparently good viewing numbers on the various property websites. We had that terrible snow that put people off for a good fortnight/3 weeks and then christmas and new year after that. Any advice on how to get people through the door?

Flat is a 1 bedroom/ open plan living/kitch in a old mill conversion so very attractive but is clearly an investment property/first time buy.

Help!

evoke

tyllwyd wrote: »

Our EA was on the phone yesterday. We've not had any viewings on the house since the end of October, so not exactly a hive of activity!

I've gone with two EAs now and am onto them every other day, stating that the other is more active! It has spurred them into action and I had a viewing through one EA last weekend and have two viewings through the second EA next Saturday.

Jackie47

Jackie47 wrote: »

Hi, I've been reading these posts for the last week and thought I'd add my story and see if I can't get any good advice...

(Condensed)...I bought my ex-Council 3 bedroomed semi nearly 17 years ago (small village in the midlands) which was all we could afford at the time. Since buying, the council have extended it adding a bedroom and wet room as my daughter had an RTA 13 years ago and is now in a wheelchair. So now fully accessible downstairs for a wheelchair user. Earlier this year we decided we wanted to move onto a bungalow with more space which we had the funds for. I put my property on the market in early June with a national EA who valued at 125,000 but put on market for 129,950. We soon realised that the valuation was too high..so dropped it by 10,000 (since which a property across the road from us which is also ex-LA has gone on the market at 10,000 under ours but non-extended). We've only had 3 viewers in that time and 1 was discounted as soon as viewing was over, in and out in about 3 minutes flat. The other 2 viewings have been really impressed with space and decoration etc. We were both really sure that our last viewer would offer. They even stopped for a cup of tea! No feedback yet from EA and that was 2 weeks ago. We're pretty sure that it's the area rather than the house that is the reason for no viewings. The EA is not being very proactive, not had any stats from rightmove, and just noticed they have nothing about accessibility on write up etc etc

Any ideas from anyone as to what to do..we have a provisional move date of 19th November to new place and really don't want to either rent out or leave it empty (especially in view of another cold cold winter). We have about 3 or 4 weeks left with present EA.

Thanks in advance

Jackie

Just an update, we complete today :T

The buyers were the ones that I felt weren't interested back in July! In the end, it went for 15% less then the original asking price.

Good luck everyone

Jackie

brit1234

rosered100 wrote: »

Altogether we have dropped 30% from the original asking price but bear in mind it was a good 10 - 15% overvalued IMO priced high for the original purchasers benefit I think.

Jackie47 wrote: »

In the end, it went for 15% less then the original asking price.

As a first time buyer looking after Easter is it right then to haggle about 15% off the asking price for both buyer and seller to be happy at the moment?

From above quotes it seems the middle ground.

tyllwyd

Well, we've made the decision to reduce the asking price by £10K. It leaves us just above the £300K mark so we'll have to see if it makes any difference.

tawse57

brit1234 wrote: »

As a first time buyer looking after Easter is it right then to haggle about 15% off the asking price for both buyer and seller to be happy at the moment?

From above quotes it seems the middle ground.

According to the land registry sellers were getting about 90 to 91% of asking price last Oct.

As most economists expect house prices to fall by up to 10% this year you could see a situation by the end of the year where house prices have dropped 10% from today. The 90% 'rule' will still hold true so in theory a house on ther market today could be lucky to get 80% of today's asking price in 12 months time.

If your first offer does not embarass you then it is too high. If I was offering now my first offer would be a good 20% below asking price and I certainly would not pay more than 85% of asking price - but that's just me.

Boringjoke

Jackinbox99 wrote: »

Now new EA is demanding a "termination fee" of 250quid for terminating within the cooling off period. We are only talking 2 days into the cooling off period here and he never mentioned this previously.

Now, obviously ive signed the contract, so i`ll have to adbide by what that says, but as I pointed out to the new EA, id have never have signed had I known about this hidden fee. Id have just waited until after id got the viewers feedback and if they werent interested then finalised the process with the new EA.

Estate Agents and the like seem to be increasingly trying this on to scr3w people out of their hard earned. Please don't fall for it. Whether the contract states there's a termination fee or not, this is in all likelihood unenforcable as the OFT would probably class this as an 'unfair clause'

Disclaimer: I'm not qualified in any way to give legal advice on this matter.

Check out the office of fair trading's unfair contract terms, found here: (sorry, new user can't post links... google "oft unfair clause" It's the first link - a pdf - that comes up)


Particular interest to you might be section 5.1

"It is unfair to impose disproportionate sanctions for breach of contract. A
requirement to pay more in compensation for a breach than a reasonable
pre-estimate of the loss caused to the supplier is one kind of excessive
penalty. Such a requirement will, in any case, normally be void to the
extent that it amounts to a penalty under English common law. Other types

of disproportionate sanction are considered below – Part III, Group 18(c)."

Personally I'd ensure that I had proof that I'd terminated the contract with them during the cooling off period and tell them to go stick their penalty...