Can we ditch the agent? Advice Needed

toad2898

Hi.

I'm after some advice . l'll try and explain this the best I can.

We recently put our house up for sale with an estate agent.

We saw a house for sale with the same agent.

We went round and had a look and liked it. The seller was downsizing and by a fluke was after the kind of house we were selling so we suggested she come round and have a look at ours. She had a look and liked it.

We agreed verbally (not officially) that we'd buy each other houses but didn't tell the agent about this. The agent had arranged the viewings and marketing etc but nothing more.

Now, here's the question. If we both turn round to the agent and say we're taking our houses off the market are we legally obliged to pay them anything? There were no set up fees or anything like that.

As I'm kind of thinking that we could both save £1000's of pounds here by now conducting everything privately thus avoiding their commision. Obviously the agent would be rather upset but business is business at the end of the day.

Thanks

kazwookie

What does your contract with the agent say about removing your house off their books, there will be a clause in there somewhere about it.

Greymarl

I imagine your contract states that you have to pay if they introduced someone to you.

evoke

Yes, you'll have to pay...if the agent finds out. It's going to look obvious to the estate agent. LOL.

toad2898

ha yeah - I thought as much but is was worth asking given the amount of commision I'll be paying them

googler

toad2898 wrote: »

ha yeah - I thought as much but is was worth asking given the amount of commision I'll be paying them

Well, if you two walk away without paying them, how much will they have to charge the next customer to make up the shortfall?

Greymarl

I agree with Googler. People are all too happy to judge estate agents for the poor service they provide but it works both ways, you sign a contract for a reason, you can't expect honesty and decency from them but not reciprocate, IMHO. I know how tempting it is when you're trying to save some money especially when we know they often just stick some photos up on Rightmove and do little else, though.

ETA I'm not an estate agent!

tleefox

Normally they would charge you their normal fee i.e. if they quoted you both a selling fee of 1.5% + VAT that is the same fee they would look to hit you both with.

And they will have clauses in both of your contracts about fees being payable if they introduce you to someone who you sell to further down the line without the EA's help.

daisygrabber

We had a similar situation a couple of years ago (the cheaper house was not on with our agent though). I would have paid the full amount but due to some ineptitude & rudeness on the part of one of the agents, I paid them their % on the price differential.
This was still a fair amout. By the time I paid, the inept/rude partner had left & the remaining partner accepted my payment. Had she persued it through legal channels, I would expect to have had to pay up the full amount but this was a compromise situation.
The agent has introduced you - that is their main task and needs rewarding. Up to you if you can negotiate an individual deal.
Also, you can both obviously sell and purchase at lower prices - this would reduce commission.

john_white

so all they did was introduce two parties who both had property to sell and both sold. Sounds like they did a good job to me.

Honest_EA

I have been lurking on these froums for a few weeks and never felt the need to register until I saw this thread. I need to make a few things clear to the OP before they make the wrong choice and possibly end up in court.

Estate Agents are often given the tags as selfish, money grabbing sharks with no thought for their customers - just an eye on the prize which is getting their fee. Speaking purely from my own situation, I am instructed to do a job which I always do with professionalism, transparency and honesty, even to the extent that it has annoyed some vendors where I have told them the blunt truth about the state of the property market or the value of their house.

You basically want to 'use' the EA to put your house on the market, arrange viewings and when one of these viewings turns into a sale you plan to ditch them before they are due to get paid for their services. Unfortunately you have little hope of getting away with this. Any EA worth their salt will notice that your house has been sold even on the QT as they can check the details online (we have a land registry site in NI, not sure what it is in England). They will also notice that your buyers house which was also on their books has sold and quickly put 2 and 2 together. If they were even more pro-active they could do a bit of digging and find out what was going on anyway. Once an EA arranges a viewing for you, if that person buys your property, even if you have de-instructed the EA you will still have to pay their fee.

You say in your final comment 'business is business'. That isn't business, that is trying to cheat someone out of money after they carried out a service for you and got a positive result.

By the way, one final note, someone tried to do that to us about 2 years ago, hoping that they could do a private deal with a buyer that we had introduced and cut us out of the loop. I found out very quickly, took them to court and won very easily. Lesson learned for them.