EA not telling us about offers coming in!

[Sellsellseller]

We are selling a house. Turns out the estate agent has not put two offers to us by someone who wants to buy our house. One offer was over the asking price. The reason seems to be because the buyer won’t go with the estate agents mortgage and solicitors (to help them hit more sales targets).

The reason I know this is because the buyer has popped a note through my door also with a print out of an email the estate agent sent them basically saying she can’t guarantee the property to the buyer unless she goes with their in-house services.

We have a contract with the estate agent, does them not putting offers forward to us void the contract?

AIBU to pull the contract and sell to her privately or will I end up still having to pay agency fees if that doesn’t make the contract void?

I was an estate agency manager 40 years ago and jacked it in because we were expected to do things I condsidered unethical.

It sounds like they've got shedloads worse since then. The business of not passing on offers unless there was a mortgage or something in it for them is disgraceful. Cash buyers would never be able to buy anywhere if they all did that.

Hope you’ve sorted it OP because that’s bang out of order.

That’s so bad. I hope you manage to sort it out.

Sack the EA’s off - they’re wankers.

I’d be very wary. It’s not unknown for EAs to fail to pass on offers because a mate or relative is hoping to get the place cheaply. Someone once openly boasted to me of his ‘arrangement’ with EAs - he’d get them cheaply ,tart up cheaply and sell on.

I am not tarring all EAs with the dodgy brush - I know there are honest ones but I have personally experienced very dodgy dealings,too.

I’d certainly be telling the EA that s/he’s in breach of their legal obligation to pass all offers on.

It's here in the Property Ombudsman code of conduct...

Can you believe this!

Only too easily - there's a reason EA's are one of the most mistrusted groups, and this kind of thing is it
The condition of using their recommended services is a new one on me though; with my late DF's place it was because they were desperate to sell to a mate, but it's all the same sort of sharp practice

BTW for all the talk about the Property Ombudsman, I hope people realise they're a commercial rather than statutory body, largely funded by EAs themselves?

www.pnclegal.com/insights/the-property-ombudsman-an-unbiased-guide/

Are you in Kent? Is it Miles and Barr? They did similar to us.

I was desperate to buy a particular house but I was porting my mortgage because of its flexibility. Before the EA would take the one I had had the offer accepted on off the market I had to jump through the mortgage advisor hoop. I brought my notebook and had my spreadsheet open on my phone showing the research I had done, the advice from the free broker I usually used, the confirmation of porting and the low fee (£99 or something) from my mortgage company and asked him to better it. I was out within 15 minutes, which most of that idle chit chat about the dooer upper he had bought. He could see he couldn't do better and was very pleasant about it. My parting comment was that I hoped it would be taken off the market now. And to his credit it was by the time I got home.

I was prepared to jump through the EA hoops to get the house but it was a complete waste of my time. I am not surprised they make decisions that make the most money for them and not necessarily the best interests of their client.

@Sellsellseller was this resolved in the end?