Estate Agent Fees

emma_72

Myself and my partner are in the process of buying a new house and selling our old one and have joined up with the same Estate Agents as the vendors of the new house. We had a out house valued on a Thursday and 2 parties came to see it on the Friday and both put offers in. We accepted the asking price offer and as such the EA didn't really have to do much marketing. The EA say we can choose what to pay them on a sloping scale of 1.5% to 2%, and with very little marketing done on their behalf we would have been happy for them just to have 1.5% but during the selling/buying process they have proved to be quite incompetent and not very efficient and would like to pay them 1%, are we able to renegotiate or are we tied in by a contract to the payment minimum being 1.5%?

Doozergirl

Have you signed anything? If you have, you're tied to it, but even if you haven't you're not exactly in a strong negotiating position when they've got two buyers lined up!

emma_72

Yep we did sign something and, like you said we did sell it quickly, just lately that the EA's are worse than useless but maybe just stress of house moving that's making it appear worse than it is. Thanks.

Woby_Tide

I'd have thought if you suggest paying them 1% their levels of incompetency aren't going to improve on your behalf

Gorgeous_George

I must be missing something here.

Valued Thurday, asking price offer received Friday. Where's the incompetence? It would be incompetent if tehy marketed your house for more than it's value and kept it on their books for months.



GG

emma_72

Thanks all for your advice I seem to have missed the most obvious thing that they did sell our house - mind you the market is flying round here and we did do quite a lot of house doctoring on it before it was put on the market.

courtjester

emma_72 wrote:

... buying a new house and selling our old one and have joined up with the same Estate Agents as the vendors of the new house. ?

Uh oh! never good practice, too much conflict of interest. Agents find it difficult enough to behave professionally without such temptations.

If you were suing somebody, would you be happy to use the same solicitor as the person you were suing ....

sunflower_2

courtjester wrote:

Uh oh! never good practice, too much conflict of interest. Agents find it difficult enough to behave professionally without such temptations.

If you were suing somebody, would you be happy to use the same solicitor as the person you were suing ....

this surely cant be helped though?

our EA is the same of all properties in our chain !

if you like a house - you cant just not buy it because its the same EA

courtjester

sunflower,

That's fair enough, but you need to be aware of the pitfalls and make sure you take great care to protect your own interests, because sure as sure the agent won't, how can they? - with the best will in the world, they cannot act in the interests of both parties at the same time.

Negotiation may well be discouraged or even blocked to ensure the chain doesn't break down - not necessarily in the interests of individual vendors.

Hopefully, you are not arranging mortgages through this agent as well.