Buying the house we are renting...what about the letting agents?

lexuslass

Hi... I would love some advice please (and I hope I am not going to get slated for asking !!) ...I will try and keep this short!

We signed an initial 6 month tenancy agreement at our current place which ran out in November 2009.. we said we would like to continue on a month by month basis (which is what we have been doing) as we were looking to buy somewhere.

Anyway, our landlords called us in November and offered us this place to buy. It's perfect but it is a 3 bedroomed place and we have 3 children so need at least a 4 bed (5 bed preferrably as my OH is from down South and friends and relatives visit regularly so it's nice to have the extra 'spare' room). We love the village we are in and the children love their schools / nursery.

We've been looking at the houses coming up for sale every day - have been to view some of them and none of them compare to the space that we have here - we could easily over time convert space to allow for another 3 bedrooms which more than solves the problem.

We have spoken to our landlord today and said that we would like to buy this place.

But how do we all stand with the Letting Agents? We don't feel that we owe them any favours as we had loads of problems with them with our last rental... they are just dreadful!

There's nothing in our contract that we signed about introduction fees etc.


Thanks in advance.

Fire_Fox

What about the letting agents? Tenants have no contractual obligations to the letting agents, your AST is with the landlord.

lexuslass

Really? thank you! I was expecting to get really slated asking this question - I imagined there are a lot of letting / estate agents on this forum that would just be out to get me (:eek:)

But how do we get around ending the tenancy... and them coming round for their final inspection and finding out we haven't moved out!? is there a way around that?

The house was up for sale for a good 2 years (with a different agent) and then up for rental (with our agent) for about 12 months...

Do the landlords have any contractual obligations to the letting agents? never been here before so I really haven't a clue! We have asked our landlords to pay the stamp duty for us (we will add on to the mortgage so they will get it back) and they have agreed to that..everything is rosey at the moment... I just don't know about the letting agents and their entitlements!

thanks x

Fire_Fox

lexuslass wrote: »

But how do we get around ending the tenancy... and them coming round for their final inspection and finding out we haven't moved out!? is there a way around that?

The house was up for sale for a good 2 years (with a different agent) and then up for rental (with our agent) for about 12 months...

Do the landlords have any contractual obligations to the letting agents? never been here before so I really haven't a clue! We have asked our landlords to pay the stamp duty for us (we will add on to the mortgage so they will get it back) and they have agreed to that..everything is rosey at the moment... I just don't know about the letting agents and their entitlements!

thanks x

AFAIK you don't need to end the tenancy, it simply ceases to be so there is no final inspection. There may well be a clause in the landlord's contract with the letting agents that he pays them off if a tenant buys the house but that isn't your problem and I wouldn't go out of my way to remind him.

Your plan for stamp duty may not be acceptable to your lender, they may well value the property as the offer price minus the stamp duty paid. If you don't tell them you may be committing mortgage fraud so do investigate carefully.

david29dpo

As above. This is a deal between you and your LL, forget about the agent. You have no contract with the agent, only the LL.

Sammy85_2

The LL will have to deal with the agents, our agent has a 2% of sale introduction fee if you sell to a tenant that they found.

Dont worry about it - not your problem.