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Kuztardd

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DVardysShadow

Too late! You have now continued negotiating and given validity to the email. I would have made the Agent go back and apologise to the buyer and withdraw the email immediately.

There is little you can do now, except sack the Agent and start over - which means finding a new buyer. Or negotiate with agent that 50% of the reduction comes off their fee.

googler

So, all that really happened here is a misunderstanding between you and your agent....

You said you'd drop the price by degrees TO £3000 off, and the agent read this or misheard you as saying you'd agreed to £3000 off without dropping by degrees to that point.......?

As to whether this constitutes 'legal negligence' - he's taken a verbal instruction from you (unless you confirmed it in writing and haven't told us), an instruction which seems to have lost something in the telling and execution. How would you prove negligence in this case?

keith969

Rule #1 about negotiations: never start with your walk away figure. Even to the EA - yes you might assume that they should be doing the negotiating, but Rule #0 says never assume anything.

Quite honestly why should you drop the price based on the buyer wanting to extend the lease anyway? If the property was valued taking into account the lease duration, then the buyer should not expect you to contribute anything.

olias

I would have to agree, the buyer made an offer based on the current length of lease. For them to say at a later stage, 'oh and by the way, we want to extend the lease so we'll drop our offer further to take this into account', is taking the pi55 IMO.

Bottom line is how much do you need this sale?

Olias

Doozergirl

olias wrote: »

I would have to agree, the buyer made an offer based on the current length of lease. For them to say at a later stage, 'oh and by the way, we want to extend the lease so we'll drop our offer further to take this into account', is taking the pi55 IMO.

Bottom line is how much do you need this sale?

Olias

I can't see where it says that the buyer knew the length of the lease when they made their offer?

You can't assume that they knew. Even if they did, £10,000 could be a big shock to them and a reduction of £3000 on a house they haven't bought yet for a bill of (what will be) considerably in excess of £10k isn't exactly a carrot.

The OP should have forseen a potential lease extension when they were coming to sell and obtained the quote prior to setting an asking price (if we are saying that a buyer should have an idea of how much it costs and is wrong to renegotiate).

Does the flat actually need a lease extension at this point? I'm presuming it does based on the price. How many years are left on the lease?

If I'm not wrong, it's not been that long since you bought the place is it OP? I remember you here when you were buying!

DVardysShadow

keith969 wrote: »

Rule #1 about negotiations: never start with your walk away figure. Even to the EA - yes you might assume that they should be doing the negotiating, but Rule #0 says never assume anything.

OP is not negotiating with EA, EA is negotiating on behalf of OP. So if you are going to empower EA to negotiate, you should give him the walk away figure. Any half competent professional should be fine with that, but with an EA, perhaps rule 0 should be followed.

Richard_Webster

uote:
Originally Posted by olias
I would have to agree, the buyer made an offer based on the current length of lease. For them to say at a later stage, 'oh and by the way, we want to extend the lease so we'll drop our offer further to take this into account', is taking the pi55 IMO.

Bottom line is how much do you need this sale?

Olias
I can't see where it says that the buyer knew the length of the lease when they made their offer?

You can't assume that they knew. Even if they did, £10,000 could be a big shock to them and a reduction of £3000 on a house they haven't bought yet for a bill of (what will be) considerably in excess of £10k isn't exactly a carrot.

The OP should have forseen a potential lease extension when they were coming to sell and obtained the quote prior to setting an asking price (if we are saying that a buyer should have an idea of how much it costs and is wrong to renegotiate).

Does the flat actually need a lease extension at this point? I'm presuming it does based on the price. How many years are left on the lease?

I agree with the points Doozergirl has made and the questions she has asked.

If I had been OP's solicitor I would have been telling OP quite forcibly that if a lease extension was effectively required then £3K as a starting point was unrealistic. As a buyer I would have wanted the whole £10,000!

Fire_Fox

This is exactly why I deal with such formal situations in writing, verbally negotiating the biggest purchase/ sale of your life is too much like Chinese whispers. If the lease needs extending for your buyer to get a mortgage then you will probably need to reduce the full amount - in this financial climate your £3K reduction is unrealistic and your estate agent should have informed you of this.

Doozergirl

Richard_Webster wrote: »

I agree with the points Doozergirl has made and the questions she has asked.

If I had been OP's solicitor I would have been telling OP quite forcibly that if a lease extension was effectively required then £3K as a starting point was unrealistic. As a buyer I would have wanted the whole £10,000!

Having read back, it seems that the OP was given a ballpark of £3000 by the freeholder a while back which has since turned to £10,000. The lease is 78 years and the OP has owned for about 2 and a half years It's a horrid misunderstanding to have, but it isn't something that you can expect a buyer to pay for if they too (I'm guessing here) would be expecting something like £3000. The offer on the table would have been based on all of that. It's like putting the price up on them - it isn't really a fair renegotiation so I wouldn't be surprised if they said no.

I can see why the OP might be upset with the EA but I don't think that £3000 was ever going to be enough - why should they go halves when the property in effect isn't worth as much as they are trying to get for it?

Homersimpson

Hi,

I've just bought a house and looked at over 30 (and had a few offers accepted and then declined for no reason) so I dealt with a lot of estate agents.

My own conclusion in no uncertain terms was that the estate agent may work for the vendor but they only look at their own interests (I must have dealt with around 10 agents and only 1 was looking after his clients interests). All the other agents were only interested in their commission.

When I looked at a house the agents general attitude was to make an offer and they would work on the vendor to get them to accept it.

One agent actually had a practice that when a house first came onto the market they would ring everyone up who they had listed looking for a house in the price range and tell them "its just what you looking for but we don't have any details yet but you need to get in quick, can you look at it today/tomorrow" In the first week the vendor had a small army through the front door but only one would make an offer and the agent would then basically tell the vendor that the market had determined that the property was overpriced and they should take the offer. The fact that the house was nothing like the buyers wanted was not revealed to the seller as most people are too polite. I found this out because I told the agent I was looking for a detached house with a drive and either a garage or room for a garage and he sent me to semi-detached house with no drive and no room for a garage, I mentioned this to the Vendor who had been told by the agent that I was really keen and that it was just what I was looking for. The agent then rang me up and said that although it wasn't what I was looking for if I made a low offer then he would work on the vendor.

If you think about it a reduction of 10k on the price of the property doesn't make a huge difference to their fees compared to having to continue to market the property, carry out more viewings (although around 50-60% of the properties I looked at were vendor viewings).

I don't have any idea how much an agent charges for fees but lets say its 2% on a 100k house, if they get the asking price the agent gets £2000, if they get 90k then the agent gets £1800. If it costs the agent £50 to liase with a potential purchaser and carry out a viewing (cost of employee, fuel etc.) then if you refuse the offer of 90k and hold out for 100k they only have to show 4 more people round the house and they are worse off than they would have been if they had convinced you to accept 90k. Couple this with advertising fees and in my opinion its plain to see where they stand.

Q What do you have when you see an estate agent buried upto their neck in sand?

A A shortage of sand;)

I'm sure that there will be a few estate agents along in a minute to tell me i'm wrong and that they are all lovely people who put their clients first and i'm sure that there are some excellent agents but in my recent experience they seem to be in the minority.