Selling some garden to neighbours but I think I might be liable for hefty agent fees, please advise

[ANTagony]

I want to sell some garden, neighbours would like to buy it. They approached us, we put land on with agents, they approached agents with a low offer. Agents reduced price online without our agreement, we put in writing to them they didn't have our agreement, after a week they still hadn't put it back at agreed advertised price so we terminated contract with them. Several months have passed. Neighbours still want to buy land we still want (need) to sell. If we accept an offer from our neighbours do we have to pay the agents under the comission will be paid if at any time contracts for the property are exchanged to ...'a purchaser who the auctioneers or their nominated local agents have introduced or have had negotiations with regarding this property during the Agency period'?

We feel they broke the agreement by changing the price and didn't secure a price we were happy with. We had already had negotiations with this neighbour which the agents were informed of.

Any pointers great fully received.

The sums of money we are talking about mean that once agency fees and solicitors costs are done with we won't see much change. We had instructed agents because they talked about greatly inflated figures that just didn't materialise.

The short point is that you terminated the contract with the agent due to breach of its terms on their part. That termination (assuming that's what it was, rather than you simply not renewing the contract upon its lapse) put an end to the contract between you, so you are free to sell to whomever you wish and should not be liable for agent's fees. In any event, the agent probably won't find out unless you tell them.

Thank you. We did terminate the contract because they changed the advertised price without our permission. That's very helpful.

The agent could find out by obtaining office copies from the land registry after completion of the sale.

Check the wording of the contract very carefully to make sure they breached the contract sufficiently. IIRC it would have to be a fundamental breach. Being tardy in changing an asking price might not be fundamental.

They lowered the price and advertised it at this lower price without my permission. When I became aware they'd changed the price I emailed them and phoned them but after a week they still hadn't amended it to the original price so we terminated the contract. Do you think that wouldn't count as a breech?

Yes (it would be a material breach - it wasn't just being tardy with changing an asking price but was lowering the price without your instructions/permission and failing to rectify the position when asked). The agent clearly didn't disagree since they presumably took no steps to argue against your termination of the contract.

Unless the contract specifically says that certain rights will subsist notwithstanding termination of the contract it will be very difficult for the agent to argue that you are liable to pay them a fee in these circumstances. While they could obtain details from the Land Registry of the sale, in practice they are highly unlikely to do so, particularly if they are not told that the land has been sold.