Purchase Management Agency Problem

kameoz

I signed a contract a while ago for the purchase of a property with a property management agency which I have used before and did have pretty good relations with. The property I was interested in fell through which I was gutted about however the agency said they would continue to look for more properties for me. The contract I signed was for up to £70,000.
Since then I was approached by a friend who wanted to go into a shared mortgage with me so I showed them to the agency and they were happy to proceed with them.
My friend was really into the finding of the property and took most of the matters with regards to finding and putting offers to the agents herself, which is something the agency should have been doing but was not. She made an offer of £174,000 which was accepted.
Still we were happy to stay with them until the agency started sending extra cost we did not understand such as a mortgage product fee and some extra solicitors fees. We asked for an itemized bill on all the costs that would be incurred in the purchase of the property so that we could budget for them but received a vague response about all inclusive fee and not being able to give estimates etc...
We were not happy with this and decided to use another agency however I emailed them asking to terminate the contract as we would not be able to afford their fees along with the deposit itself.
Trying to cut this short now, they said that i was in breach of contract and that i owed them £3999, as they had already started "phase 2" (which i dispute as nothing further was signed), of which they would discount £750 max. I have not been able to get in touch with them since and found that they had given me a week to pay up which ends tomorrow when they will pass my details to a debt collection agency (Daniels Silvermans)
I'm pretty worried about this and don't know where to go from here....
Any help or advise would be greatly appreciated

Barricade

Is there anything in the Terms and Conditions of the contract you signed, which mentions Early Exit fees, Termination Fees or suchlike?

kameoz

I know i will lose my deposit regardless but it says that I will have to pay the full fee if I move into stage 2

( Stage Two
Commences once the client is ready to proceed with an offer
The client will:
 Confirm in writing that they wish to proceed with an offer and negotiate a price on their
behalf and also the maximum price they would be willing to pay.
 Provide authorisation to instruct the solicitor and sign the confirmation of instruction.
 Immediately on receipt of the survey report inform Forces Homes in writing of any
observations that need to addressed prior to exchange of contracts. )

I dont believe that I have agreed to move into stage 2 as I have done nothing in that stage but say ok in an email to which they sent me the extra fees which i disputed. Also part of their own terms of service is, among others which they didnt do, to negotiate the offer which they never did my friend did all that herself.

Barricade

An email *can* sometimes constitute a binding agreement, HOWEVER, they have let themselves down by their 2nd point:

"Provide authorization to instruct the solicitor and sign the confirmation of instruction"

Provided you haven't done that (i.e signed anything confirming the instruction), then the requirements for "Stage 2" have not been met.
Additionally, but only minor.. No survey report has been completed.


Price Negotiation may only be part of the service.. It doesn't mean they HAVE to do it, unless you tell them to.

kameoz

Thanks. I thought this was the case but im not clued up on law or anything. I didn't sign any agreement with a solicitor and the contract itself is for a different property without a third party plus there are other parts to this that i think makes them unable to legally collect the money but it would take a long time to explain and i didn't want to take the !!!! posting too much info ect...

Thanks for your help

stephenni1971

I may be able to help on this but as I see you are forces would prefer to do it by Private Message.

Would be grateful if you could contact me.

kameoz

Thank you stephenni for your advice but I have recieved another letter from the agency now and I am getting very worried as they keep qouting their terms and adding more money to the bill, I need to find out if I am liable or not as soon as possible because the price tag is getting ridiculous. I dont believe they have passed my details to the debt collection agency yet but they might however now they are saying if i dont pay by tomorrow they are adding an extra £865.71 to the bill for some reason. I am getting really worried and dont know what to do because I dont want to hand over money to a company just because they think I owe it them when I might not.

Dave_Ham

Hopefully you are getting some help on/offline already, but I do not actually get what you are being charged for?

What sort of scheme is it?

If it is backed by Forces officially, surely someone there can come down on hard on these sort of processes/tactics.

stephenni1971

kameoz wrote: »

Thank you stephenni for your advice but I have recieved another letter from the agency now and I am getting very worried as they keep qouting their terms and adding more money to the bill, I need to find out if I am liable or not as soon as possible because the price tag is getting ridiculous. I dont believe they have passed my details to the debt collection agency yet but they might however now they are saying if i dont pay by tomorrow they are adding an extra £865.71 to the bill for some reason. I am getting really worried and dont know what to do because I dont want to hand over money to a company just because they think I owe it them when I might not.

Do not pay anything yet!

Dave Ham, the company charge a fee of £4000 to search the flood register, put an offer in with agents and instruct solicitor and refer you to their mortgage advisor.

They add little to no value and prey on naive service personnel who don't know any better to use them when a good mortgage broker would do a lot of it as part of the service anyway.

Dave_Ham

Unreal..

If they are officially representing Forces, is this not an angle as this seems shocking

stephenni1971

Dave_Ham wrote: »

Unreal..

If they are officially representing Forces, is this not an angle as this seems shocking

There is absolutely nothing official about them.

They are marketed towards the Armed Forces - they themselves it would seem are not regulated in that they act as introducers to the broker and solicitor.