EA Introduction - fees 18 months later ..... no longer with the same EA

PottyHouse_2

Hi, any advice gratefully received.

So we went on the market February 2009 and our very first viewing was by a chap whose property was not even on the market.

We then changed Agents in June 2009 with whom we are currently.

Chap rang current Agents in January this year, by now he was on the market but had not received any offers, as we were pretty fed up with the whole business we said to the Agent "he viewed last year, perhaps he could come and view when he has received an offer" so he did not view our property.

A few weeks later he drove past, he had accepted an offer on his property and stopped to talk to me - gave me his contact numbers etc and said he was "very interested" in buying our house (by that time we had SSTC and were proceeding in a chain and that fell through last week!!!!).

So, he rang us over the weekend with an offer - reason for my thread is ;

1) we are buying our onward property with the same EA that he viewed our property with last February - he was not on the market at the time, it was 18 months ago - they will obviously find out his name/details at some point when they have contact within the chain - are we liable to them to pay their fees ????

2) I presume our current Agent have no "fee ownership" if we accept his offer as we did not view through them.

Thanks for reading.

sonastin

Have you still got a copy of the contract you signed with the original EA? A lot of them these days include a time limit on how long their "claim" on a buyer lasts - usually around 6 months. I think it stems from the judgment in the Foxtons case when the judge viewed an clause without a time limit to be unreasonable. So you should check what you signed up to with the original EA.

The position with the current EA depends on where you are up to in your contract with them. If it says they have sole selling rights or you are still in their exclusive period, you might be contractually obliged to pay them fees regardless of how/who you sell it to, but they might not claim them if they aren't involved in the sale in anyway. Again, the Foxtons case makes it harder for them to justify why they have earned them.

PottyHouse_2

Hi, thanks for your useful reply.

I do have the original contract so will check that.

Current EA we have been with for 1 year (so exclusive period well out of the window!!!), was in 2 chains with them which have now both fell through.
They don't have sole selling rights as we have just signed up with another new Agent in the last week - just to make things more complicated !!!

Our thoughts are that we could recoup the EA fees from the money we have already spent in 2 broken chains.

Thanks again.