If I pull out of house sale

[Mooshamoo]

Hi , I am selling my house. There is an offer on my house. Contracts have not been exchanged yet. My circumstances have changed and I am considering pulling out of selling the house.

However I am concerned about the fees. I guess I will have to pay full solicitor fees and full estate agent fees if I pull out which will be roughly 4000. I don't think I can afford that if I don't sell the house.

Can I ask other people's experiences. What happened if you pulled out of selling a house. Did you have to pay full fees to estate agent and your solicitor?

What do the contracts say ? Estate agent fees normally only get paid if the sale goes through.

With a traditional high street EA you probably won't have to pay any fees if you pull out as they normally only get paid if the deal gets to completion. Check your contract though, there may be a small charge for the photos taken or something. And it will be different if you went for an online EA.

Your solicitor will charge you for the costs build up so far.

You are not legally obliged to pay any buyer's fees if you ill put before exchange (although morally you might want to!). What you owe the estate agent & solicitor will depend on your contract - typically EA is due on exchange payable on completion but you might need to cover photos or floor-plan. Solicitor will undoubtedly be owed something assuming of course it's got as far as that. I'd be amazed if total dipped into 4 figures based on what you've said.

So the agent does the work and you decide after sale is agreed to pull out and therefore they don’t get their commission? Here, there is a clause in the contract forcing payment for the agent if the owner pulls out of an agreed sale. You need to check what happens in the U.K.

@m00rfarm
Nobody goes around thinking "hey great I'm not going to pay the estate agent." People's circumstances change.

And its not really possible for a seller to pay 4000 euro if they are not going to sell the house.

Sellers have to be protected aswell.

Otherwise sellers are going to be charged 4000 euro every time they try to sell thier house .

I paid the estate agent 400 euro up front for marketing already. He wanted that as an up front fee.

He told me the rest of his fee will be 1600 euro.

He did send me an email beforw saying "it's no sale no fee".

But I'm just concerned that if I pull out of a sale, he could say that he did sell it from his side , and I pulled out.

It's So stressful! I need to check the clauses of the contract

As you've said Euro in your update you must be outside of the UK.
Most people talking on this forum are from UK and most agents in UK only pay commission on successfully completing a sale.

You probably need to clarify what country you're in to get proper advice.

I'm in Republic of Ireland.

If the buyer pulls out the agent gets nothing. And now if the seller pulls out the agent gets nothing. But charging 400 up front is a good idea. Sounds like they won’t charge you more so you’re ok 😊