Hhhmm - a predicament re: EA

charle1980

Hi everyone

I am new to posting here but am a regular lurker.

I have a dilemma.... My DH is the owner of our house as he is the only one named on mortgage/deeds. We wanted to sell our house and EA that valued it advised to put on the market right away cos of timne of year and it would put us in a better position to barter the price of the new build we wanted if we had SSTC

So he told me the costs, took DH's ID info and left the contract with me to get DH to sign and send back.

Meanwhile they had already took photos, put sale board up and put details (which we hadn't signed of on) on the internet.

A friend of ours in the village told his mate at work that we were selling our house (mate was looking for house in the area) so he drove past to see if he liked it and called number of EA on the board. He came to view and negotiated woth me until we agreed a price. He has now had survey done and happy to proceed.

DH noticed that contract with EA is terrible terms for us. They put Sle seeling rights and lock in period of 16 weeks. We would never have agrred to this and they never explained any of it to me. Luckily DH hasn't signed the contract and we still have it here.

I guess what I'm trying to say is where do i stand if we don't agree to pay EA fees? DH suggests we tell them now before they do any more work that they won't be getting paid. I think better to say we are taking house off the market and that's it, but tell our buyer we want to continue with the sale privately.

What do you think I should do? I am not happy with the idea of paying the EA as they told us some very dodgy things and put us in a difficult situation plus didn't explain the contract terms at all!

Thanks for reading so long
Charlotte

silvercar

A friend of ours in the village told his mate at work that we were selling our house (mate was looking for house in the area) so he drove past to see if he liked it and called number of EA on the board.

A real shame he didn't get your number from his mate; that way you could have told the EA it was a private sale.

You have now used the services of the EA, so are probably contractually obliged to pay them. You could tell them that you are not happy with their contract and if this sale falls through you will not be using them further.

You could remind them you haven't signed upto anything and try and negotiate a better deal. If they have done some work for you, the time to dump them was as soon as you noticed your house on their website not later.