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Estate Agents Breach of Contract ?

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supa_nan
supa_nan Posts: 28 Forumite
edited 16 June 2011 at 7:04AM in House buying, renting & selling
Hi I wonder if anyone can help me please.

We marketed our house on 13th May. We went with a sole agent, who told us they would market the house through internet websites, local paper, mailings, and a for sale board outside our house.
We were also told that they would keep in regular contact to achieve viewings and an eventual sale.
In the first week we had two people come to see the property, a good start.

Four weeks and 1 day later and nothing, no contact, and no for sale board.

I have used the same agent in the past and was please with their service.


I have copied an email from myself asking them to remove my property from the market.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wish to withdraw my property from sale with yourselves.
I signed a contract with yourselves on 13th May 2011 in which we agreed that my house would be marketed by You as sole agents.
At the initial consultation Mr Smith stated that as part of your marketing strategy, you would place our house in the local paper, on various websites, which would show how many hits the house has had. Also a for sale board would be erected. You would also give us regular feedback as to what\'s happening. To date we have not had a for sale board, and very little contact. Had you have been in regular contact through out the past 4 weeks I would have been able to have brought the for sale board to your attention.
I appreciate that it is a very difficult market, and would have thought it would have been good practice for any agent to keep in regular contact with the vendor to see how viewings can be increased.
I do not intend to market the house with any other agents at present, though should I wish to in the coming 8 weeks, I would seek advice about whether you have actually renege'd on the original contract signed 13.05.11
I am sorry that I feel it necessary to cancel our contract, as in the past (in I admit a very different market), the arrangement had been a very positive one.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They replied......

Thank you for your e-mail, we do accept this as your instruction to cancel the agreement, but I do need to point out that under the terms of the agreement you are unable to sell you property through another agent until the initial term of our agreement has expired. I am also sorry you feel forced in to this and have had a long chat with everyone in the office, as all feedback whether good or bad is important to us. You are correct Mr Smith did offer regular contact and it is clear from the file notes this has not been forthcoming. You also mention the stats from https://www.rightmove.co.uk, it is usual for these to be sent out every month, and as your property was not on for a whole month a report had not been generated, I do however attach a copy for your records. I you do wish to discuss any of these points in any more detail please feel free to contact me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


To be honest I'm not desperate to sell my home, when I marketed the house in 2008 I placed it with the same agent for four weeks only, and they worked hard on getting viewings, we had 8 viewings in less than 4 weeks and 3 offers :) The sale didn't happen because of some building regulation / approval or lack of it :( and our 1st time buyers lack of confidence to buy the house.

I do believe that they have breached the contract, and am not liking the fact that they feel they have me over a barrel. The agent did ask why I didn't mention the for sale board earlier, Jeesh :mad: Do I have to do their job for them ???

Anyways, many thanks for any comments you might be able to offer.
«1

Comments

  • womble12345
    womble12345 Posts: 591 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 500 Posts
    How have they breached the contract? Did it say in the contract they would contact you regularly? Did it say they would put a for sale board up? Which term writtenin the contract havethey actually broken?
  • supa_nan
    supa_nan Posts: 28 Forumite
    Thank you for your prompt reply.

    I did sign a written contract which included giving permission to erect a For Sale board, and the fee agreed reflected a discount for this. And at the actual first consultation their advisor told me verbally that they would maintain regular feedback/contact. which didn't happen. Even after the two viewings we had, I had to ring them for feedback.
    If you read their email above, they do acknowledge that <<<<<You are correct Mr Smith did offer regular contact and it is clear from the file notes this has not been forthcoming. >>>>>>>

    I would have thought in the current market they would have been a bit more proactive.
  • DVardysShadow
    DVardysShadow Posts: 18,949 Forumite
    supa_nan wrote: »
    Hi I wonder if anyone can help me please.


    .... To date we have not had a for sale board, and very little contact. Had you have been in regular contact through out the past 4 weeks I would have been able to have brought the for sale board to your attention.
    Hmm. I think your position is weak . If the lack of a sale board was a problem, you could have contacted them. It is quite pathetic to blame them for not contacting you for you not raising this as a problem.

    If you choose to cancel a contract, there are 2 routes to doing it, depending upon whether the other party is at fault.

    In the no fault case, you are essentially bound to the terms of the contract to the fullest extent, including cancellation payments and in your case, any period of exclusivity you give to the Agent.

    In the with fault case, you must point out the failings and give the other party a reasonable opportunity to put things right. And to protect your position. so that the other side is not able to force you to act as though it were a no fault cancellation, you need some evidence that you did give the other side an opportunity to put things right - ie copies of letters.
    Hi, we’ve had to remove your signature. If you’re not sure why please read the forum rules or email the forum team if you’re still unsure - MSE ForumTeam
  • supa_nan
    supa_nan Posts: 28 Forumite
    OK Thanks, Lesson Learned. Don't use or recommend this agent again.

    Like I said I'm not desperate to sell, have no mortgage :) and some family issues keep me here.
  • I'd love to know who you used. They sound JUST like my estate agents. They also made lots of promises that haven't been kept, and have been as useful as a chocolate fireguard. Like you said though, lesson learned. Fortunately you're in a position where you're not desperate to sell. Imagine your despair if you were?!
  • Yes, this sounds rather like my EA too. We're still early days, a couple of weeks in, but I'm starting to feel as if I've done more work than the EA has so far. Mine won't be in any breach of contract, but I do feel that in this more difficult market - when they themselves are likely to be less busy - that a more proactive approach, i.e. weekly phone call to update on interest, brochures sent out, stay in contact, could only be a good thing. This is what I would be doing if I was an EA, but I'm not so this is pure speculation. Frustrating though. I will be calling my EA this morning after he failed to respond to my request for a call over quite an important issue.
  • googler
    googler Posts: 16,103 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    I don't see lack of contact between the EA and you as a material breach, and don't think it's too relevant anyway,

    If the EA is speaking to you, they're NOT speaking to potential buyers. I'd rather they were proactively promoting my property to the outside world than proactively contacting me to give me a weekly/fortnightly update.
  • celyn90
    celyn90 Posts: 3,249 Forumite
    I think that you should have contacted them earlier if you were unhappy about the level of service they were providing and given them the opportunity to rectify it. It wouldn't have taken much for you to drop them an email or a phone call about the for sale board for example, it could have be sorted out so easily if you had made them aware of the fault.

    You have had viewings, which is ultimately the only real aim - so whatever they were doing, it had actually worked.
    :staradmin:starmod: beware of geeks bearing .gifs...:starmod::staradmin
    :starmod: Whoever said "nothing is impossible" obviously never tried to nail jelly to a tree :starmod:
  • dodger1
    dodger1 Posts: 4,579 Forumite
    supa_nan wrote: »
    Thank you for your prompt reply.

    I did sign a written contract which included giving permission to erect a For Sale board, and the fee agreed reflected a discount for this. And at the actual first consultation their advisor told me verbally that they would maintain regular feedback/contact. which didn't happen. Even after the two viewings we had, I had to ring them for feedback.
    If you read their email above, they do acknowledge that <<<<<You are correct Mr Smith did offer regular contact and it is clear from the file notes this has not been forthcoming. >>>>>>>

    I would have thought in the current market they would have been a bit more proactive.

    You gave them permission to erect a For Sale board, they didn't say they actually would. Unfortunately regular feedback/contact is meaningless, every two months for instance is regular if it's every two months. If you're not in a hurry to sell just let the contract take it's course and if you don't want to sell it's pretty easy to put prospective buyers off.
    It's someone else's fault.
  • supa_nan
    supa_nan Posts: 28 Forumite
    dodger1 wrote: »
    You gave them permission to erect a For Sale board, they didn't say they actually would. Unfortunately regular feedback/contact is meaningless, every two months for instance is regular if it's every two months. If you're not in a hurry to sell just let the contract take it's course and if you don't want to sell it's pretty easy to put prospective buyers off.

    Maybe I didn't make that very clear, it's not just that I gave permission, it was part of their 'robust' marketing strategy, they said they would put a board up as for sale board make up a small percentage of sales.

    And I beg to differ with regard to regular contact, after all they could be offering me tips on how to attract more viewings, ie, decluttering, decorating, price reduction....

    Obviously I have done 2 out of 3 of the above and had the agents have contacted me I would have been inclined to reduce the asking price,
    Oh well they obviously wasn't desperate for the business and equally I'm not desperate to sell, I've lost nothing, ;)

    Maybe not a breach of contract but pretty poor service IMO
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