Dishonourable, but legal.

owenjt

tooldle said:

So historic rather than a current problem?

Yes historic subsidence/unpinning which was not declared when being sold and only came to light when the searches came back.

robatwork

The interesting legal point is how you prove someone "knows" something.

Unless there is some paper trail it's a very high bar. Even if you could get a witness statement (buyer who pulled out) who claimed to have told the EA, they would need a date/time/name and the EA principal could still deny knowledge.

But would be fascinating to see someone take a disreputable EA to court to get their solicitor/surveyor fees back for this.

Bendy_House

Aaaaaannnd - it's 'sold' again.

newsgroupmonkey_

robatwork said:

The interesting legal point is how you prove someone "knows" something.

Unless there is some paper trail it's a very high bar. Even if you could get a witness statement (buyer who pulled out) who claimed to have told the EA, they would need a date/time/name and the EA principal could still deny knowledge.

But would be fascinating to see someone take a disreputable EA to court to get their solicitor/surveyor fees back for this.

I don't know about anyone else, but I generally talk to my EAs via email.

Therefore if I was formally pulling out, I would have sent the EA an email with the reason I was pulling out and would expect a response quoting my original email.

If this has happened 5 times, there's no way that the EA didn't know this.

Woolsery

owenjt said:

tooldle said:

So historic rather than a current problem?

Yes historic subsidence/unpinning which was not declared when being sold and only came to light when the searches came back.

 How 'historic' the underpinning is has relevance.

A long underpinned house  with no further movement is stronger than it was before and not an extra insurance risk. There not much to declare if, say, the work was done 35 years ago.

If it was15 years ago, that's stilll likely to affect insurance, so in that case, very relevant.