Estate Agents Fees Advice

chrisuk44

Hiya,

Prior to putting on the market we agreed £3000 fixed fee with the estate agent.
His words were £3000 or 1% + VAT.
So we thought £3000 no problems

Now we are near exchange they say its £3000 + VAT !!!!!

We have no written contract with them so we have nothing to compare against.
Has anyone else had this issue or does every fee + VAT regardless ???

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.....

sheff6107

Yes, always VAT on top. Sorry.

Marvel1

£3000 or 1% (+vat) is for both.

ashe

chrisuk44 wrote: »

Hiya,

Prior to putting on the market we agreed £3000 fixed fee with the estate agent.
His words were £3000 or 1% + VAT.
So we thought £3000 no problems

Now we are near exchange they say its £3000 + VAT !!!!!

We have no written contract with them so we have nothing to compare against.
Has anyone else had this issue or does every fee + VAT regardless ???

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.....

Surely you must have signed a copy of their terms in order to be listed with them? Ask them for a copy of the contract. It shoukdnser out the fee and should also say plus VAT

harrys_dad

If you have no written contract with them you could claim they agreed £3000 inc VAT, or even £3 inc VAT. How would they disprove this? There must be a written contract that you signed somewhere.

eddddy

harrys_dad wrote: »

If you have no written contract with them you could claim they agreed £3000 inc VAT, or even £3 inc VAT. How would they disprove this? There must be a written contract that you signed somewhere.

A contract can be verbal - there's no legal requirement for it to be written.

However, the Property Ombudsman's code of conduct says an EA's terms and conditions should be provided in writing.

But even the code of conduct doesn't require the client to sign anything.

So saying something like "I'm not paying the £3000 because I didn't sign anything" is likely to be a non-starter.




And on the topic of VAT, if a contract is "silent on VAT", it is assumed that the amount stated includes VAT. So if the EA stated that the fee was £3000, with no mention of VAT - you might be able to argue that was a VAT inclusive amount.