Estate agent charging buyer for ID check

davisaj22

Hi all,

I wondered what people thought Of this.

my wife and I have had an offer accepted on a property. The estate agent acting for the seller want to charge us £60 per person to check our ID and performing anti money laundering checks.

This is performed by a third party. I understand they are legally obliged to carry this out,  but this £120 fee seems excessive?

thanka

user1977

Not normal, if they want to charge a specific fee I would expect them to look to their client for that rather than pocket £60 from everybody who makes an offer.

simon_or

Absolute nonsense, never heard of this. Just another money making/saving scheme from EAs looking to take advantage of the current market conditions.

My work involves doing online KYC checks on customers and it costs £2.40 a pop.

Oh_bother

I agree - it does not sound right. Our conveyancer and mortgage lender carried out the anti money laundering checks. 

MaryNB

I didn't pay my seller's estate agent a penny. They checked my ID via a third party app and did a quick check of my finances but that wasn't for anti money laundering, it was just so they could see if I could afford the property (and to sell their mortgage advice services). 

eddddy

Estate Agents are required to do Anti Money Laundering checks on people who make offers (although I'm not sure how rigorous most of them are about it).

But charging £60 or £120 (or any amount) for the checks sounds like a bit of a rip-off money making scheme.

It would be interesting to see what they did if you refused to pay the £120. Would they cover the cost of the checks themselves, or would they let the sale fall through for the sake of a £120 fee?




TBH, it looks like a really unscrupulous estate agent could be even worse. There's a special exemption in the law - the estate agent isn't required by law to forward your offer to the seller, if they're unable to do Anti Money Laundering checks on you.

So a really unscrupulous EA could refuse to forward your offer until you pay the £60/£120 fee.

SallyDucati

Charges like this I would expect to be included in the calculations of how much they charge sellers, not for buyers.

Reminds me of one estate agent I had round to value my flat, I could go with their option where the fee was paid by the buyer "if they want it they'll pay it".  I didn't like that and thought it would put buyers off, so went with another agent.

Flugelhorn

No way would I pay that - have bought 3 places lately and none of them have done that - few bits of ID shown / e-mailed and I haven't a clue what the "anti money laundering" check involved (if anything) - I just showed them the bank balance. 

if any payment then should be added to the vendor's invoice

K_S

davisaj22 said:

Hi all,

I wondered what people thought Of this.

my wife and I have had an offer accepted on a property. The estate agent acting for the seller want to charge us £60 per person to check our ID and performing anti money laundering checks.

This is performed by a third party. I understand they are legally obliged to carry this out,  but this £120 fee seems excessive?

thanka

@davisaj22 It's not common at all to charge the buyer for this and £60/person is EXTREMELY excessive.

To give an example, I use SmartSearch for running KYC/AML/PEP checks on clients and it's widely used across the property industry by brokers, conveyancers and estate agents. It costs me £1.99+VAT per search, that's it. There are plenty of similar other providers in this area but the most I've heard of it costing is £3.50 or so per search.

twoLou

MaryNB said:

I didn't pay my seller's estate agent a penny. They checked my ID via a third party app and did a quick check of my finances but that wasn't for anti money laundering, it was just so they could see if I could afford the property (and to sell their mortgage advice services). 

Exactly the same here. 

I’ve not heard of an agent charging before and it sounds like the checks cost only a few pounds going on what others have said.

I certainly would not pay, it sounds like they think with the market as it is that buyers will pay anything to secure a property.

74jax

Which EA is it?