Must I pay an incompetent estate agent?

T

Tadaima

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I'm changing agent. My house went sale agreed over 6 months ago but the buyers have still not received the money from their own sale. My agent said their house sale was imminent hence sale agreed. The agent is not answering any emails, texts or even emails and calls from my solicitor. I therefore have to change agent. Do I have to pay the original agent anything? Surely this is not a professional service as the buyer was not properly vetted, too much time passed and no communication.

I also lost the survey costs on a house I wanted to buy in light of the sale. The agent told me to go ahead with the survey as my own house sale was imminent. There are 20,000 views on my house on Daft but none could view it as it was sale agreed with the second person who viewed it. I do not want to pay the agent anything in light of this mess.
 
Tadaima said:
Do I have to pay the original agent anything?
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Usually the estate agent only gets paid their fee if/when the property actually sells. But advertising costs incurred are normally due regardless. Check your contract with them for clarification?
 
I am changing agent. Anyone know how I get the ad for my house off Daft.ie and myhome.ie with the original agent when he won't respond to this request? I have tried to contact Daft.ie but there was just a bot answering questions on their website. I didn't get the answer.
 
In my experience the ad will be archived once the advert has expired. Do you know how long you paid for?
 
Selling a house is a messy business.
You can vet the buyer but you can't guarantee that it will go through.

As it went sale agreed, presumably the subsequent contact was between your solicitor and their solicitor.
 
Why have you not gone down to the estate agents office and looked them in the eye and asked they what was going on?.

If the EA is told by another party in the chain that their sale is imminent, he/she has no real way of verifying that.

In effect, what you are looking to do here is move from Sale Agreed back to For Sale. If you have lost confidence in the current EA and want to change, that will depend on the wording of the contract you've signed. Potentially they may ask you to pay their Daft costs.

Note given the way house prices are going, potentially you may get more now then previously but only time will tell
 
Peanuts20 said:
what you are looking to do here is move from Sale Agreed
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Please not more of this unfortunate nonsense.

"Sale Agreed" is a meaningless term that has no legal status and serves only to confuse, as in this case, unfortunate vendors.

"For Sale" or "On The Market" if you like, until contracts are exchanged, "Sold" once they are, nothing else pasted on an EA's board outside the property or plastered across a picture on a website means anything. They are imaginary terms that have no meaning - advertising junk, created by and only of any use to EAs.

I might have mentioned some or all of this before.
Tadaima said:
My agent said their house sale was imminent hence sale agreed.
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Did the agent receive a booking deposit/expression of interest from the prospective purchaser? If paid, where is that contract/no contract deposit now? In whose bank account?

OP, What were your expectations of the EA? What exactly does your contract with the EA say?
 
mathepac said:
Please not more of this unfortunate nonsense.

"Sale Agreed" is a meaningless term that has no legal status and serves only to confuse, as in this case, unfortunate vendors.
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Please not more of this nonsense....

It is not a binary sold/not sold. Who cares what legal status it has.

The seller has chosen a buyer to exchange contracts. Time for the solicitors to get involved and EA to stop viewings.

How to you expect to get to "sold" without being sale agreed??
 
As I've said elsewhere "Under Offer" is a more accurate description of where negotiations are at if an EA accepts a booking deposit. If the EA gets a better offer, they are obliged to pass this on to the vendor for a decision. That's because the ultimate sale price decision is the vendor's, not the EA's. Now the original "sale" is no longer agreed upon, but the property is still "Under Offer", albeit with more than one offer.

Nothing is agreed upon until contracts are exchanged as this is the signal that all negotiations have ceased; the endpoint is agreed.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
If the sign still said "for sale", then the estate agent would be plagued with calls about it.
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An EA plagued with calls about one of his listings? Lucky EA!

EA taking phone call: "Ah yes, that property is "Under Offer", I have an offer in excess of / at the asking price, where would you like to be?"
 
mathepac said:
As I've said elsewhere "Under Offer" is a more accurate description of where negotiations are at if an EA accepts a booking deposit.
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It really isn't! The last time I sold a property, I received many offers, but I only agreed to accept one of them.

For Sale has no legal status and we're all OK with that, we don't need a rant on every thread where the term sale agreed is mention.
 
Thanks for replies. The solicitor had difficulty contacting the purchasers solicitors, so questions reverted to the EA. We were informed the purchasers changed solicitors and their house sale fell through. After some months, the contracts were sent to the purchasers new solicitors, and we were told by the EA that contracts were being signed 'today'. Three more months passed, no contact from EA or the solicitor, so we asked the solicitor to find out what was going on, and they could not get satisfactory answers, so we asked for the contracts to be returned and the house to be put back on the market. That was three months ago, and still no response or contact from the EA or viewings, so we instructed them to remove it from property websites. They did this but made no contact with us. I signed the contract with the EA but I don't have a copy of it. (My bad). I can't remember the terms; however, surely no communication or response to communication must be unusual.
 
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Contracts work both ways and if above is a true timeline, then it would be impossible for the EA to claim anything as you can show that they made little or no effort.
If anything there's scope for a complaint against the agent.

Write to them informing them that you consider the contract ended due to their inactivity.

Engage a new agent and ensure they properly vet the buyer.
 
Thanks peemac. I have engaged a new agent subject to finding out what the old contract had on it. The whole thing makes me sad as I had a good historic business relationship with the EA and would have considered them a local friend. But for financial reasons, I just want to sell my house with as little nonsense as possible.
 
mathepac said:
Please not more of this unfortunate nonsense.

"Sale Agreed" is a meaningless term that has no legal status and serves only to confuse, as in this case, unfortunate vendors.
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No arguement that it has no legal status, gazumping is not illegal in Ireland but from a practical process part, normally when a house goes sale agreed, the EA stops putting an effort into selling the property, stops viewings etc (and I accept there may be exceptions to that) and waits for the solicitors etc to do their thing.

Hence, and in effect, the OP want an EA who will actively sell their house, that is all I was saying.
 
Tadaima said:
I signed the contract with the EA but I don't have a copy of it. (My bad). I can't remember the terms; however, surely no communication or response to communication must be unusual.
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Perhaps you know others who have used this particular agent who might have a copy of the contract? All the big ones seem to follow similar lines, outlining the terms for cancellation and their entitlement to payment in full if you sell the property within 6 months of termination.

I'd advise talking to your solicitor and have them write something up, outlining how you are considering the contract null and void due to their failure to honour the terms and communicate, perhaps giving them 2 weeks to respond.
 
Update: I have a new agent and new for sale sign outside my house. The original agent has suddenly contacted us requesting his fee and or the sale to go ahead with the original buyers who he claims are still interested. We had pulled the contracts back from his recommended buyer nearly four months ago but he never contacted us since. We informed our solicitor we were getting another agent because of zero communication. He never gave me a copy of the contract. Surely the contract is null and void because of frustration due to lack of communication. The solicitor does not want to be involved in a dispute as it is a small community.
 
You should have anticipated all of this as it was all mentioned in the thread. The same advice applies, ask for a copy of the signed contract with the EA, pay the fee agreed in the contract. Refer to your backing out of the original sale by the solicitors letter to their solicitor requesting the contracts back. And move on.

It is all very unfortunate the circumstances you find yourself in and I do have sympathy but hopefully you will sell for higher than the first price and that will ease the blow. And be very picky about which buyer you pick this time.
 
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