help!! estate agent fee

dmg24

so what your saying is its ok for estate agents to advertise a house for someone when that house dose not belong to them.

In effect, yes! The advertisement does not have any kind of legal implication, and they would obviously not be able to let the property until they own it.

I'm not saying I agree with it, but it is not out of the ordinary.

zipwen1

ok thanks for all your comments but im desperate here so is ther a way i can tell the estate agent that i dont want to use them anymore but still sell to our buyer

dmg24

In a word, no.

You could ask the buyer if they are willing to deal with you privately, but this would be in breach of contract, and the estate agent would have every right to sue you.

I honestly can't see anything that would enable you to rescind the contract.

Sorry x

MissMotivation

zipwen1 wrote:

ok thanks for all your comments but im desperate here so is ther a way i can tell the estate agent that i dont want to use them anymore but still sell to our buyer

No! The contract you have with an agent is a contract to sell the house for you......the have done that and are entitled to their fee! If you were unhappy at the level of service then the decent thing to do would have been to bring it to their attention before the sale was agreed......they then may have let you out of the contract and you could have sold through another agent.

As it stands you have not got a leg to stand on, they sold it, therefore, you have to pay them!

zipwen1

so i cant pull out then contact the buyer after and arange to sell again. plus
the contract with was only for 3 months and were into month 7 now dose that not make a difference. sorry if i keep asking the same thing but im only 21 and havent got a clue

silvercar

you sell to this buyer, you pay the estate agent.

you pull out and remarket and sell to someone else then you don't pay.

really you have 2 clear options, either sell at the agreed price and pay the EA or pull out of the contract and don't sell to this buyer. This is really going to mess the buyer around and he would be rightly annoyed but there would be nothing he could do about it.

The less clear option (and I'm not recommending this) is that you tell the estate agent you can't afford to sell at the price agreed and ask for a few thousand more. You will upset your buyer who may, deservedly, pull out. The estate agent may offer to slightly reduce their commission to hold the deal together. It is a risky strategy and only worth pursueing if you intend to otherwise pull out. The downside is you lose your buyer and P1ss off the estate agent big time, but I have seen it done.

Doozergirl

zipwen1 wrote:

ok thanks for all your comments but im desperate here so is ther a way i can tell the estate agent that i dont want to use them anymore but still sell to our buyer

Your estate agent will smell a rat if you pull your house from the market now, especially after the amount of time you've been on the market.

I can assure you that they will check what happens to your house and be straight onto you with the bill and a court summons for their fee if you attempt to dodge them.

I've already suggested that you try for a goodwill discount from them, but please just do things properly with the agreement of the EA...

...and please don't encourage other people on this site to do the wrong thing when, as you say, you have no experience of the consequences.

housebuyer_abc

Doozergirl wrote:

Your estate agent will smell a rat if you pull your house from the market now, especially after the amount of time you've been on the market.

I can assure you that they will check what happens to your house and be straight onto you with the bill and a court summons for their fee if you attempt to dodge them.

I've already suggested that you try for a goodwill discount from them, but please just do things properly with the agreement of the EA...

...and please don't encourage other people on this site to do the wrong thing when, as you say, you have no experience of the consequences.

Well said doozergirl.

And to zipwen1 you may only be 21 but the last time I checked that still made you an adult. So go and act like one and talk it through with the estate agent.

You'll find they are usually accomodating people. But as everyone else has pointed out they have held their side of the deal and sold the house. You should also honour yours.

I think you'll find that the contract will mention something about notice period (usually two/four weeks) and also a period of exclusivity on introductions usually 6/12 months therefore if you sold to the purchaser within that time period through another EA you would have to pay both EA bills.

Your only sure way of avoiding paying this bill is to pull out and sell to someone else.

Incidentally they didn't overvalue it, you just accepted a lower offer, the chances are if you were willing to wait long enough you'd have got your price, but you may not have, thats the gamble with property.

Woby_Tide

I'm struggling to establish why

a) they've 'had' to accept a lower offer, if you don't like the offer, don't accept

b) why the fees/stamp duty are such a shock, they've always been 'known' consequences of selling and buying a house, if it isn't in the budget for moving then it isn't the agents fault(that said a lower offer actually reduces the fees....)

AndrewSmith

zipwen1 wrote:

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.

OK, this may not be what you want to hear but i do not believe in patronising people and will tell you exactly as it is. There is no point in sayng 'yes you can complain and reduce your fees' when to be honest you have no grounds for complaint.

Fact is that they have found you a buyer. You will only pay them i assume a percentage of the sale price so their fees are commensurate with the reduced price anyway.

As for overvaluing: Market value of a property is basically only ever a matter of opinion. If you were to employ a fully qualified chartered surveyor to give a market value of a property he would simply visit a number of local estate agents and ask for comparable evidence of 'sold' prices of similar properties. It is the local property market itself that determines the actual value.

I agree that £10,000 is way off on a property valued at £76,000 however I assume that you had more than one valuation? You were hardly likely to go with an agent who valued it for less.

You are ultimately the one who decides what offer is acceptable, if you cannot afford to make the move at the agreed sale price tell the agent and dont accept the offer. It is not their fault that you have accepted an offer leaving you £4,000 short.

What you should also do is speak to the Agent and explain the predicament you are in. Tell them that you cannot afford to move based on the current offer. Ask if they are prepared to negotiate slightly on their fee and try to get you slightly more money from the buyer. Any agent would rather take slightly less to ensure the sale goes through rather than have you pull out completely and not get paid a bean.

To gain anything from this situation though you need to keep positive channels of communication open instead of storming into the branch blaming them for your mis-calculation and threatening with complaints.

Hope this helps

Andy