Terminating contract with estate agent

yulson

Can anyone please tell me if it's possible to terminate a contract with an estate agent before it is officially due to end?

The contract I've got is for 8 weeks, but so far they've been less than useless so I want to get rid of them now! Any ideas would be most appreciated!

P.S. For anyone about to sell their house in Luton, do NOT use Connell's!

CliveB_3

Yulson,

Its very dangerous to try to end a contract before it has expired - you may end up paying two lots of commission if you sell using another agent.

The only real way of getting out of an agreement is if the agent has materially breached it, and this is usually unlikely. If this has happened, I would suggest taking appropriate legal advice from a lawyer.

Another alternative to consider is marketing the property yourself. If you sell it, no commissions are normally due to the agent under a sole agency agreement.

If you check out this board for the 'Sell Your House Free With No Commissions At' thread, I am offering MSE members the opportunity to market their own homes free on my website https://www.search4homes.co.uk

Using our service, your property will be marketed on over 150 property websites and portals - including Assertahome, Fish4homes, Sky TV and many more.

This offer is being made completely free of charge to MSE members, as the MSE board has saved me a lot of money over the last few months (including several woolies phones) and it's nice to give something back once in a while.

There you go - no strings attached, no cost and no sales pitch either.

Hope that helps.

Clive

https://www.search4homes.co.uk

Pal

If you check out this board for the 'Sell Your House Free With No Commissions At' thread, I am offering MSE members the opportunity to market their own homes free on my website https://www.search4homes.co.uk

Using our service, your property will be marketed on over 150 property websites and portals - including Assertahome, Fish4homes, Sky TV and many more.

This offer is being made completely free of charge to MSE members, as the MSE board has saved me a lot of money over the last few months (including several woolies phones) and it's nice to give something back once in a while.

There you go - no strings attached, no cost and no sales pitch either.

Hope that helps.

Clive

https://www.search4homes.co.uk

This looks very much like a sales pitch to me. Advertising (even if the service is free to help you get your business up and running ) is not permitted on these boards except in the Referrers board.

Yulson - I suggest you sit down with the agent and talk them through your concerns. Any professional agency will be extemely worried that you think the service has been poor and will be keen to help sort the problem out.

If they can't resolve the problem, ask them to release you from the contract early and get them to confirm it in writing. I would hope that a professionally run organisation would be willing to do this.

gBay - Estate agent contracts do not cost anything. It is an agreement to pay them commission on the sale of your property for a certain time period, but the home has to be sold before they get anything. The time period is largely irrelevant. On appointing an agent last week I reduced their "standard" ten week term down to six weeks, which will hopefully focus them on the marketing a bit more.

Robert_Sterling_3

This looks very much like a sales pitch to me.

If it were a sales pitch one would expect that the original post would be bumped back to the top of this forum from time to time.

terrierlady

:-/ Have you asked the agent why they think the home is not selling?
, ask them to place the home as house of the week in the window ,is it on their internet site?
ring them ask how many viewings they have arranged for next week?
How many viewings have you had?
ask what has been the feedback of the people who have viewed?
If there is a problem coming up> then at least you address it, changing agents will not make the problem disappear if there is one.
Chase them make them work for your money.
Does the price of the home need to be reviewed?

zx2011

Note to sellers:
ALWAYS USE AN ESTATE AGENT THAT IS A MEMBER OF THE National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA).
Their website is at https://www.naea.co.uk.
All their members operate to their professional Code of Practice and Rules of Conduct.

AND

ARE MEMEBRS OF THE Ombudsman For Estate Agents Scheme. There website is at https://www.oea.co.uk.
"A free, fair and independent service for buyers and sellers of residential property in the UK."

"The only Code of Practice for the Estate Agency Sector to have completed Stage One of the Office of Fair Trading's two-stage process towards approval."

Connells of Luton are members of the NAEA, OEA and are also part of the Skipton Building Society Group too.

The NAEA's procedure for complaints is at http://www.naea.co.uk/the_naea/general_public/complaints.asp

The consumer guide for the OEA is at Consumer Guide at https://www.oea.co.uk.

Pal

If it were a sales pitch one would expect that the original post would be bumped back to the top of this forum from time to time.

Indeed, but I am sure that someone who is making a genuine offer would avoid doing that.

I am also sure that Martin is now very happy that the same offer is being spammed all over his website forums.

I wonder if anything in my original post gives away the fact that I am not an estate agent?

lucymumof1

signed a contract with an estate agent on 28.04.10 and agreed that;

1. He would act as sole agent in relation to the property for an initial period of 20 weeks

I have been contacted by a different estate agent who valued the property but i chose not to use due to him not being based on my town, who has said he has a cash buyer who is interested in viewing the property as an investment. this cash buyer has been a client of his for 3 years and has 10 properties in this area already.4

If i let this buyer view the property and if i accept an offer am i able to cancel the contract with my current estate agent?
Also, if the cash buyer wants to have a survey done would my current estate agent be alerted by the surveyors?

Thanks

Zelie

The agent gets his commission by introducing potential buyers to you and having a sale go through. If the agent didn't introduce the buyer then they don't get the commission HOWEVER you'd have to be careful about whether the buyer didn't notice your agent's advert or sign out front and ask their usual agent to investigate it for you.

From what you say, it seems the second agent found out about the property being for sale because you approached them before you had a contract with your current agent so it should be fine. The other interesting thing here is that as you have no contract with the second agent you don't have to pay them any commission should this buyer decide to go ahead (though don't expect them to get involved any further in the sale).

DVardysShadow

Pal wrote: »

Indeed, but I am sure that someone who is making a genuine offer would avoid doing that.

I am also sure that Martin is now very happy that the same offer is being spammed all over his website forums.

I wonder if anything in my original post gives away the fact that I am not an estate agent?

If you are serious, you will at least go back and break the clickable links in the spam you quoted. Please, if you quote spam, break the links.