£1000 estate agent incentive

Sazz79

Hi, just looking to see if anyone has any advice / knowledge about this.


We've sold our flat via an estate agent who said it was more likely to sell if we offered the £1000 buyers incentive to use the estate agents solicitors and advisors - it did. It sold within 2 days, but the process is being dragged out by the buyers solicitor being awkward and not communicating massively well with ours.


Basically, our buyer is the father of the mortgage advisor in the estate agency branch, and they are not using the same solicitor we are. Our solicitor was recommended by the E.A and we were assuming that they worked with a few different ones. However, we would have assumed that our solicitor and the buyer's - if both used regularly by the EA - would have good lines of communication as they would be working together at least semi-frequently.


Does this sound like the buyer has basically got the £1000 off his fees (at our expense as we are basically selling for £1000 less) and not actually fulfilling the criteria required? A criteria was also that they used their mortgage advisor, but the one in their branch is obviously a family member so would this be a conflict of interest? Would it be unreasonable to ask the EA for proof that the people being used by the buyer are actually ones meeting the incentive criteria?


This is our first property sale and has been beleaguered by pitfalls, and if anyone could offer insight into whether this particular issue is standard or not then we would be massively grateful!


Thanks in advance!

eddddy

In your position, I think I'd just look at it like this "I offered a £1000 discount to get a quick offer - it seemed to work - so I don't care too much about the details."

But...
- It was probably not a good idea to use the EA's "recommended" solicitor
- Most of the £1000 will end up in the EA's pocket (as referral fees)
- Did you get lots of EA valuations before selling? (Not just the one, who then sold it to their employee's dad?)


The EA probably didn't "recommend" a solicitor, they probably "referred" you. This means the EA gets a fee of perhaps £500 (which you indirectly pay) and you get a cheapo solicitor.


Perhaps the same thing happened to the buyer, so you both have cheapo solicitors. (Or perhaps the Mortgage Advisor warned his Dad against using the EA's solicitor)

Short of changing solicitors, there is not too much you can really do - except plug away at things.

pinkteapot

Nothing you can really do at this point. Changing solicitor won't help if the problem is with your buyer's solicitor.

Him using the EA's tied services didn't guarantee they were any good.

You could query it with the EA but you want to keep them on-side in case you need them to chase the chain, put pressure on people to exchange, etc. They may not be great at this anyway as the buyer is a colleague's relative, so it may not be worth the hassle of querying things. You could ask on the mortgages board if any of the brokers there would be able to act for a relative, but I can't really see a conflict of interest. They'd want to do their best for a relative, probably even more so than their average customer.

Agents owned by Sequence Homes do this ridiculous buyer's incentive. I'm sorry it's too late and you signed up, but for others reading and the future, this was my take on it when we sold:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4761286