help!! estate agent fee

zipwen1

hi sorry this will be a long one,
the thing is i want to know if i can refuse to pay my estate agent their full fee for selling my house and how i should go about it if i can.
we arnt sattisfied with there service and to be honest cant afford to pay them the full amount. our house was up for sale for £76,995,00 they overvalued it by 10,000 i feel that this is a massive margin of error for a property in this price range, they 0nly managed to put a for sale sighn on the house once we had accepted our 2nd offer which was about 6 months later, we had a 1st offer of 72 from a company, they failed to tell us that the offer was made by a company (if we had know this we would have run a mile) however we accepted it. it took this company seven weeks to have a survey done and in the end totaly wasted our time becouse they pulled out 2 months later.( i know this has nothing to do with rr but if they had informed us that it was a company we wouldnt have accepted an hence saved time and money) we also discovered that they had advertised our house to let for this company. i dont know much about the buying selling process but i also thought that the estate agent was there to make things go smoothly and keep us informed on everything but we have been the ones doing all the ringing around soliciters finding out whats going on. at the moment we have had to accept an offer of 67 which leaves us having to find 4 thow to pay stamp duty and fees. please help i really dont want to pay reeds rains for there service although i would pay for what it cost them to advertise as i think this would be fair.

silvercar

Bottom line is that they found you a buyer, so you have to pay them.

If you were not happy with their service you should have pulled out of your contract with them sooner.

Most EAs overvalue property, knowing buyers make offers below asking price. Whether you accepted this buyer's price was your choice. They haven't forced you to. You need to find more money because you accepted the highest price you were offered.

I don't know why you would have turned down a company offer. The company must have been serious if they asked the estate agent to find a tenant for them.

lynzpower

I understood from this that they had offered the OPs house as one to rent to a company?

In which case thats pretty bad indeed.

zipwen1

i tell you why we didnt want to sell to a company its becouse they are sceeming tw*ts the reason is they offered 72 with no intention of paying that, they stalled for seven weeks prob so we could find a new house, then pulled out and got one of their wives to put in the lower offer knowing full well that we were in the process of buying our second house, we were now into winter and hopes of finding someone else to buy would be slim, that we had to sell to relocate, and had no other choice. i know EAs overvalue but by 10 thow, thats a joke on a property in this price range. maybe if it was worth 170 thow 10 thow wouldnt seem that much but on property such as mine come on!!

lynzpower

OK - you sound about as stressed as i am with all this moving business.

You can pull out. you dont need to sell to someone if the offer is too low.

dmg24

we also discovered that they had advertised our house to let for this company.

The way I understood it was that the company were buying the property as a buy to let, and were using the agent to market the property for them. This does happen, and is certainly not illegal. It is a completely separate transaction to your own.

Who says that the estate agent overvalued the property? Maybe you accepted too little?

Nothing you have written seems out of the ordinary for an estate agent, as I don't believe you have any grounds for a reduction of fee.

lynzpower

I would agree that its a huge margin of error in their valuation

Did you only get one valuation?

dmg24

The estate agent is not a professional valuer, their price is purely a guideline.

Also, it is only a large margin if you sold for a fair price. There is nothing to say that someone wouldn't have come along in the future and offered the full price.

Doozergirl

It's a shame that you didn't ask earlier really. If you are not happy with an estate agents work, you either complain and expect things to improve or end the contract and find someone else. It isn't fair when they eventually find you seller to turn around and ask for a reduction.

You can try, but your complaint needs to be well worded and you must refrain from swearing at them because any reduction at this point would be good will on their part. You need to encourage that good will.

Otherwise, assuming that they operate on a no sale, no fee basis, the other choice is that you don't sell to this buyer through this agent. You terminate your contract, obtain further valuations and perhaps some constructive criticism on what you can do to improve the saleability and price of the house.

ps. There was obviously something up with the company that tried to buy originally but I would be happier selling to a company. You expect that they will make rational decisions based on knowledge.

zipwen1

dmg24 wrote:

The way I understood it was that the company were buying the property as a buy to let, and were using the agent to market the property for them. This does happen, and is certainly not illegal. It is a completely separate transaction to your own.

so what your saying is its ok for estate agents to advertise a house for someone when that house dose not belong to them. it was still owned by us the company had not exchanged contracts with us. if thats the case il go and put my mums house up for rent and try and get some extra money in!!

zipwen1

lynzpower wrote:

OK - you sound about as stressed as i am with all this moving business.

You can pull out. you dont need to sell to someone if the offer is too low.

stressed aint the word mate, and i would love to pull out and tell the estate agent and company to shove it but my partner is so rapped up in the new place he wont.