Foul Play/case for legal action

GDB2222

lincroft1710 wrote: »

I think your agreement to sell to the builders rendered your contract with the EA null and void.

Yes, I agree that it did so, but only on 26 August when contracts were exchanged. Unless the EAs formally ended their instructions with the OP they are clearly in breach of the EA Act.

To Badasz: I would give it to a solicitor to deal with - you'll get more compensation for less hassle. I wouldn't write letters to anyone.

lincroft1710

But surely as OP had agreed in May to sell his house to the builders outside his contract with EA, he no longer required EA's services and they had no further obligations to him.

badaz52

I have just found the part exchange agreement and clearly under point 6 it states:

- In the event that following acceptance of this offer and clearance of our Homebuyers Survey, you decide not to proceed for any reason and withdraw prior to exchange of contracts, your reservation fee will not be refunded. In addition, if a buyer had been found by ourselves or our instructed estate agents by that stage and should you decide to pursue a sale to the buyer independently, you will be liable for the agents fees for the introduction of the buyer and also liable to reimburse to TW all marketing and selling costs incurred by them.

Obviously in our case we would not have had to reimburse TW at all as the property was already on the market so cost them nothing to advertise and the buyer was already introduced as I showed them round twice before.We would have just paid our EA fees but would have saved a lot more than this if we had the opportunity to negotiate.

In this case it reads that until exchange of contracts the PX agreement was not legally binding and my argument is that as we were not informed that a buyer had been found and it was someone who had already a firm interest with our own EA and whom had viewed the property twice. We were prevented from pursuing the sale independently by the EA and thus have overpaid for the property.

Does this sound promising?

There is concrete proof that the sale was agreed way before hand due to the time scales so surely they haven't really got an argument??

RobertoMoir

badaz52 wrote: »

I really do think I have a case here.

Then hire a solicitor.

Anything else is just spinning your wheels.

CapJ

lincroft1710 wrote: »

But surely as OP had agreed in May to sell his house to the builders outside his contract with EA, he no longer required EA's services and they had no further obligations to him.

He hadn't made a binding agreement and in any case it was for the Estate Agent to confirm with their client (the OP) that they were no longer selling the house, not take instructions from a third party about the OP's potential sale.

Let me give you an analogy. You lend me 100 GPB and I promise to pay it back in two weeks. The next week I go to your bank and say "well lincroft promised to pay me back so I will just have the money out of his account please." This to me is the same concept legally, i.e. a third party interfering in a contractual relationship and one of the parties allowing it without communicating with the other party.

badaz52

Now to find a solicitor who would be willing to take this on. Obviously I don't want to pay large sums of money out in fees if I haven't got a chance in hell of proving professional negligence.

GDB2222

badaz52 wrote: »

Now to find a solicitor who would be willing to take this on. Obviously I don't want to pay large sums of money out in fees if I haven't got a chance in hell of proving professional negligence.

It's probably breach of contract, actually. The best way to find a solicitor is to write it all out logically, preferably on one side of a piece of A4, and then send/take that with you to see a few firms. I think that pretty much any small/medium sized firm with a litigation department could take this on. There's no special expertise needed.

There's also an ombudsman scheme for estate agents.

lincroft1710

CapJ wrote: »

He hadn't made a binding agreement and in any case it was for the Estate Agent to confirm with their client (the OP) that they were no longer selling the house, not take instructions from a third party about the OP's potential sale.

Let me give you an analogy. You lend me 100 GPB and I promise to pay it back in two weeks. The next week I go to your bank and say "well lincroft promised to pay me back so I will just have the money out of his account please." This to me is the same concept legally, i.e. a third party interfering in a contractual relationship and one of the parties allowing it without communicating with the other party.

I don't think this is a very good analogy.

.

OP had a contract to sell via EA. He agrees to sell outside of this contract, thus I think if not breaking the contract, at least demonstrating he no longer required their services.

If OP was so keen to be in a better bargaining position, knowing he was getting £140K from builder, why didn't he go to EA and tell them to contact the "eventual" buyer and say that as they were interested he would accept £140K.

Although it may cost him, it is probably best for him to get proper legal advice from a solicitor.

CapJ

lincroft1710 wrote: »

OP had a contract to sell via EA. He agrees to sell outside of this contract, thus I think if not breaking the contract, at least demonstrating he no longer required their services.

He had only provisionally agreed to sell to the builder, there was no committment. The contract with the EA was still valid.

lincroft1710 wrote: »

If OP was so keen to be in a better bargaining position, knowing he was getting £140K from builder, why didn't he go to EA and tell them to contact the "eventual" buyer and say that as they were interested he would accept £140K.

But the EA had illegally not passed on the offer the buyer had made therefore the OP had no way of knowing the buyer was interested.

lincroft1710 wrote: »

Although it may cost him, it is probably best for him to get proper legal advice from a solicitor.

Yes at least it will give him peace of mind. And a free half hour consultation might not cost anything.

Richard_Webster

It seems to me that if OP was happy to take the £140K from the builder (who might then sell it for £130K or £150K but that was the builder's risk) then he has no complaint.

He could have said to Wimpey that he wanted to continue to market it for more and if by the time exchange of contracts was due he couldn't find a buyer would they take it off him for £140K? If you were doing that you would be actively contacting the agents through the process asking if they had any buyers, etc. They might then have said that there was this person who had viewed the property but she wouldn't pay £165K, but they could get her to pay £150-155K - he could have sold it to her for that money and been better off.

However from my reading of this thread there is no record of any active communication between OP and the estate agents following the initial "deal" with Wimpey. As far as OP was concerned he had chosen to take the £140K and was happy with that and what happened to the house after the builders bought it was not his concern. (Presumably in fact they exchanged contracts with the buyer immediately after exchanged with him.)

As far as I can see it is more about the terms of the initial "deal" with Wimpeys. If it was (as it seems) that Wimpey would buy from him for £140K and he was happy with that because it took away all the stress etc then I can't see he can complain after the event.

If he made it clear that he still wanted to market the property he would presumably have told the estate agents to carry on marketing it at a higher price than £140K and been keen to find out about possible buyers. Whether Wimpeys would have been happy with that scenario I don't know - they may or may not have been - but isn't that academic? As it was it certainly looks as if OP was content to sit back and receive the £140K so I can't really see what his complaint is.