Estate Agent - contract question

iandv

Hi

We may have sold our house in a part exchange with another vendor, as their home was listed as part ex with another estate agent.

The part ex owner and I are currently discussing figures on the part ex before they go back to their estate agent with the agreed amounts

Would we have to pay our estate agent fees as they did not introduce the buyer to us and have nothing to do with the sale so far? According to our contract our EA has sole agency rights and within this section it states

You will be liable to pay for rumuneration to EA in addition to any other costs or charges agreed; if at any time unconditional contracts for the sale of the property are exchanged
..............
d.) EA are not prepared to compete with their clients who may wish to sell their home privately
e.) with a purchaser introduced by another agent in that period
................

Any ideas on where we stand?

googler

Is this the EXACT wording of clause D?

EA are not prepared to compete with their clients who may wish to sell their home privately

iandv

Hi

Yes thats the exact wording, but what about clause e - as it is a part ex deal with another agent?

googler

It doesn't make grammatical sense to me, but e) does....

iandv

could you put in plain english for me please, as I am not sure if I would have to pay a fee or not?

iandv

any ideas?

DVardysShadow

Rather than look at the contract, let us look at what you have done. You have found your own buyer.

So d] applies. But it is poorly written. It looks like a thought captured in the drafting stage which applies to your situation but was never developed to express the real intent.

As it stands I can see

• To the agent, it probably means the term should read ".... with a purchaser found by the client".
• To the seller, it could possibly reasonably be interpreted to mean that the agent will not contest a sale to a purchaser found by the client. So the term could read ".... excepting sales to purchasers found by the client.

This is so ambiguous that it really is worse than being one way or the other, you can either argue it or accept the interpretation favourable to the EA.

iandv

The buyer is from the house we are purchasing (part ex) which we found through their estate agents.

However the buyer and I have done all the negociating and thus far our estate agent has not been involved - so do we have to pay them a fee?

Speaking to the vendors estate agent they said that their client would have to make an offer on our home through our estate agent, although I am not sure why my estate agent needs to get involved in this and why it cant go straight to our solicitors and the vendors estate agent?

Hope I am making sense??