Warning to anyone taking their house off market

pickledpink

How much did the buyers lose? After all, they must have instructed solicitors, a surveyors report, Land Registry searches etc during that time?

They might be able to sue you, too.

pardal51

dave11thnun wrote: »

Just a warning so that others don't get caught out, like I did, when I took my house off the market last year.

Backround: Put house on market in Feb 08, EVENTUALLY our estate agents found a buyer mid 09. We looked at many houses and put offers in on two houses over the next few months but both fell thru. By Nov 09 we were still not in a position to move out and it didn't look like we would be until after Christmas. So we thought, to prevent our buyer having to hang on any longer we would withdraw from sale so they could find somewhere else, so we did.

4 days before Christmas 09 (nice!) we received an invoice for £1725 from our estate agents.

Now, on the agency agreement it does say in paragraph 2c that we owe them if "a ready, willing and able purchaser is introduced to the property and the terms are agreed and solicitors instructed in writing for the sale in accordance with your instructions whilst we have sole selling rights, or joint selling rights, but you subsiquently withdraw and unconditional contracts for sale are not exchanged."

Fair play, however, just below that, the second sentence of paragraph 3 states "In the even of the property being withdrawn from sale NO CHARGE WILL BE MADE." So I refused to pay.

The estate agent took us to small claims court today and won, as according to the judge, paragraph 2c comes before 3 so therefore it takes presidence over it.

So now we have to find nearly £2k.

We learnt the hard way not to ASSUME that just because it says "NO CHARGE WILL BE MADE" doesn't mean it won't!

Had we known this would all happen, we could simply have left the house on the market and pretended we were still looking for as long as it took for the buyer to get so pee'd off that they pull out to go elsewhere. Therefore no "ready, willing and able purchaser" and therefore no fee to pay - simples!

Fortunately for me though, they hadn't applied initially for interest on the amount so the judge didn't grant it when they asked at the end. Good job really as the interest according to the agency agreement is 3% per calendar month above the HSBC base rate! November 09 - Sept 10 - that's a LOT of money!

Hope that this prevents this situation happening to anyone else stupid enough not to have read the ts & cs properly like us - learn't the hard way!

Which makes me think that the EA deliberately put this in the contract, so when you read you see NO CHARGE and bites the bait....disgusting

puddy

dont get sniffy at people's opinions when they are clearly based on the fact that you were not 'misled', you misunderstood the terms which are separate situations. googler is correct, you didnt withdraw the property for sale, you had a buyer.
you should have done what i did, i moved into my parents spare room with my luggage and cats, put my stuff in storage to avoid losing my buyer when our own sale didnt move fast enough. no way was i losing a buyer in that market (18months ago)

chris_m

dave11thnun wrote: »

after all, I found the buyer in the first place after over a year of two viewings from the estate agent -

YOU found the buyer? He wasn't introduced by the EA? If that is the case, surely the clause about "a ready, willing and able purchaser is introduced to the property" could be suspect?

G_M

pickledpink wrote: »

How much did the buyers lose? They might be able to sue you, too.

No. Not under the current property sale process in England and Wales.

pardal51 wrote: »

Which makes me think that the EA deliberately put this in the contract, so when you read you see NO CHARGE and bites the bait....disgusting

No, they put 2 separate clauses in covering 2 separate scenarios. Unfortunately you failed to understand the distinction.

chris_m wrote: »

YOU found the buyer? He wasn't introduced by the EA? If that is the case, surely the clause about "a ready, willing and able purchaser is introduced to the property" could be suspect?

Good point!

honey06

dave11thnun wrote: »

EVENTUALLY our estate agents found a buyer mid 09.

dave11thnun wrote: »

after all, I found the buyer in the first place after over a year of two viewings from the estate agent

??? bit confusing

keystone

chris_m wrote: »

YOU found the buyer? He wasn't introduced by the EA? If that is the case, surely the clause about "a ready, willing and able purchaser is introduced to the property" could be suspect?

But the EA is quoting "sole selling rights" and thats probably where this all hinges. Never, ever, ever sign up to a contract with an EA that gives them sole selling rights which is absolutely not the same as sole agency.

Cheers

puddy

i didnt mean you should move into yours or anyones parents, i meant that i moved out to avoid losing the buyer, you could have rented for the time it took for the sale to come through

googler

dave11thnun wrote: »

I sorry if I sound upset, but I wrote this to try to help prevent people from screwing up like me in the future......

Maybe you could re-title the thread, then?

You didn't take your house 'off the market', since at the time you withdrew, it was Under Offer, and wasn't actually on the market......

FATBALLZ

Thanks for the warning, but why didn't you just tell the buyers you were having trouble finding somewhere and that you were happy for them to look elsewhere? Just withdrawing from the market completely seems a strange course of action.