HELP please - misled by Estate Agent

Adell

Hi,

in need of urgent help as i suspect i may need to act quickly complaints wise. (Estate Agent Ombudsman is closed for training today)
We made an offer on a house last year which was accepted. We were one of "many" viewing the house just a couple of days after it went on the market.
We asked the Estate Agent several times about the construction of the property - his answer "it is standard construction". So we were happy to proceed with the purchase and mortgage application.
Our initial mortgage provider took us all the way through to mortgage offer stage and refused the buy to let mortgage based on the fact that we might want to move into the property at some point (bit of a grey area here with the lender but there you go)
We were offered another product almost immediately and started the application process with this lender. Vendor got cold feet part way through this second application and put the property back on the market (fair enough) and pushed us to instruct a survey to show we were serious. we did this and the property still remains on the market
We are now a few months on from the initial offer and the surveyor looked at the property on Monday. During the day I tried to contact the Estate Agent to see if the survey had gone ahead and thus the vendor would be able to take the house off the market again. Very vague response saying he would have to check.
My broker checked in with the EA and was asked if we knew anything about the property being non standard construction - answer: not at all!! otherwise we wouldn't have been applying with the current lender!
Long story short - survey has come back that the property is steel frame - the lender will not lend on this property.
The estate agent is claiming that they knew nothing about this until our surveyor brought it up - even though he is aware that there are several properties in the village that are of steel frame and therefore only cash buyers or those with certain lenders will be able to buy it.
We are know almost £1000 down in fees for survey and solicitors for searches - NONE of which we would have incurred if we'd known it was non standard construction in the first place.

What - if any - fees can we reclaim and from who??

thank you

Tim_Bisley

The agent may have been told that - it isn't their job to check. You shouldn't ever be proceeding on a house without a survey.

Rambosmum

You can't. That's what a survey is for. Put this one down to experience.

The EA only markets what he knows/ is told/ can see with his eye's about the property. The buyer has to do all the checks with regards to it's construction, safety etc. The EA has a responsibility not to give misleading information, but if he gives information which is true to the best of his knowledge and is then wrong that isn't his fault if it was given in good faith.

It is likely that the EA will now market this as a steel constructed property, with the caveats and issues that go with this.

As long as you are pretty sure you can get a mortgage, which it sounds like you are, the best thing to do is get a survey done, then instruct your solicitor to start searches etc. That way if the survey comes back bad then you haven't spent any additional money.

Good luck in your house buying.

Gordon_Hose

The EA is just there to market the property and put seller and buyer in touch with each other. It's not their job to know about construction types, as has already been said, this is what the survey is for.

kingstreet

Adell wrote: »

We asked the Estate Agent several times about the construction of the property - his answer "it is standard construction". So we were happy to proceed with the purchase and mortgage application

Ordinarily, I'd agree with the posts which have gone by so far.

However, if the EA was asked outright and their assertion it's standard construction is one on which the purchaser has made cost incurring decisions, the EA may have some liability.

In my experience, if you don't know, you say you don't know and you'll check; or you have checked and you say it's standard because you have evidence from the vendor on which you've relied.

OP - do you have any verification of what was said, in an email or other way in which you can evidence it?

Adell

Rambosmum wrote: »

It is likely that the EA will now market this as a steel constructed property, with the caveats and issues that go with this.

.

Ive been checking every day since Monday, when the survey was done, and no change on the particulars yet - really hope no one else gets misled

Adell

kingstreet wrote: »

Ordinarily, I'd agree with the posts which have gone by so far.

However, if the EA was asked outright and their assertion it's standard construction is one on which the purchaser has made cost incurring decisions, the EA may have some liability.

In my experience, if you don't know, you say you don't know and you'll check; or you have checked and you say it's standard because you have evidence from the vendor on which you've relied.

OP - do you have any verification of what was said, in an email or other way in which you can evidence it?

I think you've hit the nail on the head - the EA was asked on 3 separate occasions about the construction of the property.

Unfortunately i can't evidence it - my parents were there during the second viewing when we asked him. My parents are experienced landlords so were the ones who recommended that we ask about construction on the first viewing.

i think it will be difficult to prove as its his word against ours. I could call him now and record the conversation?

kingstreet

It's too late now.

However, I would consider putting a complaint to the EA in writing. If you achieve nothing else, it may flush out if they had actually obtained confirmation from the vendor that it was supposedly standard construction; or simply decided to tell you it was, without establishing the facts.

Adell

Just as an add on - he said on Monday that he knew others in the immediate vicinity were steel frame but didn't know this property was??
After some research today on RightMove & Zoopla i can see that other properties in the area had previously been market as "cash buyers only" - obviously much more honest Agents.

I can't see how he didn't know - he was the MD of the company & said he'd worked in the area for 15 years.

kingstreet

He's lost a sale and doesn't get paid.

He doesn't benefit from making this mistake. You can probably make life difficult for the EA but as has been said previously you probably won't get money from it.

Check which of the property redress schemes the EA has joined;-

https://www.gov.uk/redress-scheme-registration-estate-agencies

and see if they have an opinion.

bnegative

Gordon_Hose wrote: »

The EA is just there to market the property and put seller and buyer in touch with each other. It's not their job to know about construction types, as has already been said, this is what the survey is for.

But in this case the EA has failed to market this property correctly which had cost the OP.

Any decent EA that knows their job should not be making these mistakes.