Buying house - agent aggressive and not telling truth, what can we do?

bouicca21

I had a similarly aggressive EA when I bought my flat. I don’t think EAs need any training other than how to calculate their commission. My neighbour is one.  He used to sell flat pack furniture, now he sells houses although he is demonstrably ignorant of common procedures let alone basic property law. I doubt he knows what ethics are.  

Just refuse to deal with them.

TheJP

edmor said:

TLDR- we’re buying a house and the agent is being quite aggressive and I don’t think wholly truthful. What can we do?

The full story - We’re buying a chain free Victorian property from an older lady who is moving out for health reasons.

Survey and searches have identified quite a lot of issues incl damp, new roof, rewiring needs and so forth but we’re quite committed to the property. Offer accepted very end of June and we made clear from outset that we were in rental and needed 6 weeks notice to exit it. 

Throughout the process the agent has been quite dismissive of any concerns and just tried to push sale through, querying the need for any further survey ie of electrics etc. We asked for some money off (£10k) as we’ve uncovered about £25k of work. This which was rejected - altho we’ve sucked it up as the accepted offer was fair.

Suddenly in the last two weeks the agent has gone absolutely beserk beyond previous pushy emails and started spamming us and our lawyers with emails calls and voicemails to push the sale through. On Monday we got an email saying they were aiming for exchange and completion on 30 September and the vendor has moved into rental property in expectation - bear in mind we’ve not seen a contract yet and legals are still ongoing and we had absolutely no knowledge of any targeted date for exchange let alone completion. 

My partner spoke to our agent about the matter, explained the position and then the agent sent an email to the lawyer which absolutely misrepresented everything my partner said. We emailed to challenge this. 

We then spoke to our lawyers who pushed back on our behalf and then we recieved some of the most aggressive emails ever from the agent and regional sales manager which involved the partner of the law firm getting involved in the chain.

I honestly feel we cannot continue with this agent and the transaction is about to break down. I also worry for the vendor - I think they are agressivrly pushing an older lady to get the sale asap, if she’s truly moved to rental property I have no idea why as we’re weeks from exchange or completion.

Is there any way we can ask for the vendor to re market with a new agent or formally complain to a trades body?

Its been 3 months since your offer was accepted and you haven't seen any documents? What's the hold up?

The agent works in the interests of the seller, if the seller/family are putting pressure on the EA then the EA will put pressure on you and your solicitor to keep things moving, that's how it works. How much communication have you given the EA/seller on a rough timeline of when exchange and completion could happen?

Unless the emails were threatening then i don't see any wrong doing just an overzealous EA. 

saajan_12

Sounds like part of the game EAs play, in the hopes it'll push things along. Just ignore, and tell them to communicate via the solicitors if its getting too much.