Bamboo auction

tommo84

Need some legal advice please.

Today I won some land via Bamboo auction. 

It was a conditional Auction, via modern method. The reserve was met.

the hammer went down, “congratulations” message received and “reservation fee” debited from my account.

went to the estate agents to sign the “reservation agreement” and was informed that the vendor had decided to sell it privately and withdrawn from the sale. 

Bamboo refunded my “reservation fee” and consider the matter closed.

Bamboo informed me that because contracts where not exchanged, it was though titties basically. 

I was under the impression that once they’d taken my “reservation fee” that created a legally binding contract and  only I could withdraw from the sale on the understating I would lose the “reservation fee”

can they do this? If not, what are my next steps? 

Thanks 

elsien

What do their auction terms and conditions say?

RHemmings

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. 

The terms and conditions on their website seem to only be about using the website. Not the legals of the purchase process .https://www.bambooauctions.com/terms-and-conditions/

Each auction has a reservation contract. Looking at the Reservation Section, it does appear to say that the seller is tied down to selling the property, and is not permitted to sell the property to anyone else during the exclusivity period. See terms R1 to R5 here. 

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/bamboo-cdn/docs/reservation-agreement.pdf

It also says that neither the buyer nor the seller can terminate the agreement during the exclusivity period. In several places it mentions R5.3, but I can't see anything there that gives the seller an easy opt-out. 

Given the web address, I expect that this is a standard contract across all of their auctions. But, I haven't confirmed this. 

Just because their terms and conditions seem to preclude the seller just pulling out after a successful auction doesn't mean that is legally enforceable. However, the reservation contract appears, to my inexpert eyes, to make this at least putatively a different situation from the standard 'anything is fair game until contracts are exchanged' situation. 

Albermarle

I think with these modern auctions the seller has to pay a big fee. If maybe they wanted to pull out and paid the fee to Bamboo, then Bamboo would be happy it was a done deal.

tommo84

Thank you for your comments. 

RHemmings. I am of the same opinion. Their argument is that the reservation agreement wasn’t signed, but their terms state that the reservation period starts the moment the counter hits zero and reservation monies have been deposited. 

My issue is finding legal representation to even look at this. I’ve contacted around 30 solicitors and none of them are taking on new litigation cases due to work load. So I can’t even pay someone to go through the contract. I’ll post some photos of the reservation agreement specific to this property that came with the legal pack 

tommo84

this is specific to the property I won, found in the legal pack

elsien

As long as you are aware that any opinions you get here are likely to be layperson's ones which may or may not be correct.

tommo84

I’ve also had some “off the record” advice to the effect of you won’t be able to enforce the sale, but your are entitled to compensation. But the legal costs and stress won’t be worth it. I disagree, it’s about the principle 

tommo84

The mse forum posted screen shots out of sync. 

2-4-1-5-3

tommo84

If there is a solicitor on this forum, or somebody knows someone that can comb over this contract… I’m happy to pay for some legal advice. But time is very much against me.
many thanks everyone 

Gavin83

You talk of legal action, etc. What are you actually looking for as an outcome to this?