Lying Estate Agents - Can We Sue Them??

moneypenny1_2

Hi all,

We're selling our house. Estate agent presented an offer from a buyer and told us that he was a chain-free cash buyer.

Of course once we get into the process we discover that the buyer actually needs a mortgage. Queried with the estate agent who squirms and says actually the buyer needs a mortgage but only a very small one e.g. 10%-20%.

We keep asking questions until the EA admits that actually the buyer needs a 50% mortgage, his father to be a guarantor and the mortgage has not been approved as yet because bank is not satisfied with his documentation.

We tell the EA that we are going to pull out of the sale unless the buyer gets his mortgage sorted and valuation survey booked by the end of the week.

Survey goes ahead but then there are yet more delays. We continue to chase estate agent who tells us that everything is on track, it's just the bank being slow, and we should still exchange and complete on time and it will "all be fine". We don't believe this for a second, as we are using the same bank for our mortgage finance, and had our survey and mortgage approval within 48 hours.

We ask our solicitors to speak to the buyer's solicitors to get to the bottom of the problem, given that solicitors have a professional duty not to lie so we should get some facts. Turns out that the buyer is in fact selling a house in order to buy ours and so, low and behold, we are in a chain!!!! Apparently the buyer has to wait until his sale exchanges to know whether he can buy our place.

Call estate agent demanding an explanation and he tells us he never said the buyer was chain free, a bold faced lie, and we are sick to our stomachs.

We would never have agreed to sell to this buyer given had we known his real position. We also agreed a sale price below asking, on the basis that he had cash now and was ready to go. We have had the flat off the market for six weeks now and lost countless other opportunities to sell it.

We are still looking at all our options but pulling of the sale out at this stage is going to be difficult because we are purchasing a house and need to move because we are having a baby. We have also seen some of the correspondence from the buyer to the estate agent, and we feel the the buyer himself has clearly been honest from the start, it is the fault of the estate agent who lied about who the buyer was to get us to accept the deal basically.

Do you think we can take the estate agent to small claims court and get the money lost on the purchase price?

Voyager2002

No chance!

You offered your purchaser a discounted price on the basis that there was no chain, and that is no longer the case. So you should advise him that he has now lost the opportunity to purchase at that price, and invite him to arrange finance for the full asking price or else look elsewhere: unless he cares to arrange a 'bridging loan' and exchange PDQ.

phill99

You will have trouble sueing but I would be inclined to sack your estate agent. You may well be in breach of contract but I would tell them that they can Explain their actions in Court. They will soon back off.

If ithe EA is part of a larger group I wiuld be Writing (yes writing, nit emsiling) their MD asking for an explanation.

cloo

Sorry to hear of difficulties, hope you manage to make the sale happen. I agree you can't sue the agents in all likelihood but it is worth remembering never to believe anything agents say about dates. They will always say that things will happen way sooner than they will and if you have good solicitors, I'd be much more inclined to believe their account of how things are going.

kingstreet

Does the Memorandum Of Sale issued by the agent at the outset of the sale state the purchaser's position?

Normally it would say "FTB" or "Non-Dependent" or similar if there was no chain.

Has the agent actually put in writing what you claim, that the purchaser needs no mortgage and is not dependent on a sale?

brightonman123

report to the EA's regulatory body, and local trading standards too.

phill99

brightonman123 wrote: »

report to the EA's regulatory body, and local trading standards too.

The EA may not have a regulatory body. Membership of say NAEA is not compulsory.

pinkshoes

If you accepted a lower offer due to it being a cash buyer, then tell them the new price for a buyer in a chain that requires a mortgage.

If he has spent money on a survey, then hopefully he will agree.

MysteryMe

There is a section in Trading Standards dedicated to Estate Agents so I would make a complaint via the CACS


http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/england/consumer_e/consumer_protection_for_the_consumer_e/consumer_citizens_advice_consumer_service_e/if_you_need_more_help.htm

Ivana_Tinkle

Exactly the same thing happened to us last time we moved, plus it turned out to be an enormously long chain, with an acrimonious divorce and a spot of gazundering in the middle. In the end, we were so relieved once the whole thing finally went through that we just paid the fee and never reported the agent to anyone. I now regret this immensely. If I could go back in time, I'd have knocked a couple of grand off their fee and told them to sue me for it.

DRP

Voyager2002 wrote: »

No chance!

You offered your purchaser a discounted price on the basis that there was no chain, and that is no longer the case. So you should advise him that he has now lost the opportunity to purchase at that price, and invite him to arrange finance for the full asking price or else look elsewhere: unless he cares to arrange a 'bridging loan' and exchange PDQ.

If you can afford to wait and find another buyer, then this is what i would do.

Really sh**ty behaviour from your agent.