Can an estate agent mislead you during negotiations?

moneysavinghero

https://www.tpos.co.uk/
Thats the ombudsman. Make a complaint if you think that you have been misled. They will gather all the facts and make a judgement.

user1977

manitravels said:

verytired11 said:

I still don't see how paying for it would speed it up - presumably as you say the tenants have to be served the correct notice anyway.  What was the nature of your offer? Did you just increas the purchase price, or did you say ' I will pay the tenants £5000 if they leave early'? 

Presumably the tenants would be paid to leave early but given the tenants had 4 weeks notice instead of the 3 months I was quoted, I'm starting to think I was misled / lied to. If there were costs then upping my offer by £5k to push this along, I don't mind too much as it was still a fair price. 
But I'm starting to think I was lied and so am asking for evidence to back up the claims given earlier i.e. 3-6months / £5 k costs 

The landlord wouldn't have been entitled to get rid of the tenants within 4 weeks - just because the tenants happened to leave that quickly doesn't mean they had to. It could have taken months to evict them.

I'm still not sure what you think you were paying £5k for - the landlord would have been expecting to give notice to the tenants and then suffer a void period of some sort between the tenants leaving and completion of the sale to you, and all the costs associated with that are normally expected to be borne by the seller as part of the normal costs of being a landlord.

manitravels

moneysavinghero said:

But to answer the thread title. No, a Estate Agent cannot mislead you. This would be a breach of both the TPOS Code of Practice (Ombusman) and The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations (The Law). But i am not sure that this is the case here. I think you may have mislead yourself by getting confused about things.

Here is the full story. 
When I first visited the property many months ago I asked about the tenants leaving in time for the stamp duty holiday. No problem they say. 
I call the estate agent and again I ask about the stamp duty holiday and the tenants leaving in time for it.
I'm told the vendor has other properties he can move them into worst case.
 
I make an offer. It's accepted. I'm then told that it will take 3-6 months to evict the tenants. If I'm willing to up the offer price by £5k the seller would make best efforts to get the tenants out. At the time I think, even with this increase it's not a bad price. 
I visit the property a month later and the tenants are unaware that the property has been sold and state that the agreement they have with their landlord to leave the property is 4 weeks.
(From what I can piece together I think they have a lodgers agreement but this is unsubstantiated.) 

Hence the reason I'm thinking I was misled here. 

manitravels

Oh and in subsequent phone calls the estate agent has outright said the vendor paid £5k in costs to get the tenants out. 

LAD917

If I'm understanding you correctly, it sounds like you offered X if completion happened outside of the stamp duty holiday window, and X + £5000 if it happened within the stamp duty holiday window?  You didn't offer X + the cost of removing the tenants.

We don't seem to know when the tenants' lease was up, or what notice period they had.  But given covid eviction laws, it's not unreasonable that the tenants could have stayed in the flat longer, well past the stamp duty holiday, without some kind of incentive.  It sounds like the vendor hedged his bets that he could get the tenants out on or before the end of the stamp duty holiday with £5000 (or less). 

He may have been able to get them out with less, perhaps 0, but he delivered what he promised - a vacant property by the stamp duty holiday.  If the above facts are right, IMO you should pay.  With any type of credit / allowance, one party may spend (or save) more or less. 

How much are you saving in stamp duty?

moneysavinghero

manitravels said:

moneysavinghero said:

But to answer the thread title. No, a Estate Agent cannot mislead you. This would be a breach of both the TPOS Code of Practice (Ombusman) and The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations (The Law). But i am not sure that this is the case here. I think you may have mislead yourself by getting confused about things.

Here is the full story. 
When I first visited the property many months ago I asked about the tenants leaving in time for the stamp duty holiday. No problem they say. 
I call the estate agent and again I ask about the stamp duty holiday and the tenants leaving in time for it.
I'm told the vendor has other properties he can move them into worst case.
 
I make an offer. It's accepted. I'm then told that it will take 3-6 months to evict the tenants. If I'm willing to up the offer price by £5k the seller would make best efforts to get the tenants out. At the time I think, even with this increase it's not a bad price. 
I visit the property a month later and the tenants are unaware that the property has been sold and state that the agreement they have with their landlord to leave the property is 4 weeks.
(From what I can piece together I think they have a lodgers agreement but this is unsubstantiated.) 

Hence the reason I'm thinking I was misled here. 

You agreed to pay £5k for the seller to make best efforts to get tenants out.
From what you say those efforts were successful and he did get the tenants out in a month.
Was part of your deal that the tenants must know the property was being sold? Or just that you wanted them out so you could complete before end of June?
Are you now likely to complete by the end of June?

steampowered

The seller will just see it as you offering £x for the property.

If you are now only offering £x minus £5k for the property, you have dropped the price.

It sounds like you are just gazundering. It doesn't sound like you made the £5k conditional on being provided with "evidence" of out of pocket costs. "I will cover your costs" is a very different offer to "I will pay you an extra £5k".

Also, the vendor has achieved what you wanted if you are meeting the stamp duty holiday. But as you are a first time buyer I don't understand why you are bothered about the stamp duty holiday as you would benefit from first time buyer stamp duty relief anyway? 

Not sure what the estate agent has to do with any of this.

verytired11

I don't think you have a complaint because you got exactly what you paid for ie the tenants out. It's true that the landlord had to evict them anyway, and it's also true that they might have done so quickly without the money; but it seems to me you were asked to up the offer and you did.  There isn't any paper trail between that and the eviction so it is hard to prove.  With the benefit of hindsight you could have said you would pay the costs on receipt of an invoice, but that probably wouldn't have been viable anyway.  It might be better just to move on at this point and be glad that your property is vacant and you aren't stressing about whether the tenants will get out in time.

fiveacre

What outcome are you looking for? Seeing evidence of costs isn't going to change what you're paying so it seems a bit pointless. Do you want to proceed at the agreed price, or are you looking to reduce your offer? Are you happy with the current price of the property?

NameUnavailable

Sounds to me like the vendor offered some if not all of your £5K as a cash incentive to the tenants to leave asap.

I don't see why you have any right to demand evidence of how the £5K was spent however, unless you made that a condition of the offer.

Presumably you haven't paid the £5K up front so if you're not happy pull out and buy something else!