Hi everyone,
I’m after some advice/opinions so would appreciate some insight. Sorry it’s a long one!
We listed our house under an independent estate agent under a sole agency contract at 1.25%+VAT commission.
We have had the sale of our house fall through 4 times and have generally been unhappy with the estate agent and parted ways just before Christmas.
We settled our invoice for photography costs in January and have been merrily on our way engaging with new estate agents with a view to appoint someone new in April (after we have addressed some issues that came up on a previous buyers survey).
I then received a call out of the blue last week from the EA to advise me that buyer number 3 wants to know if the house is for sale as they had just had an offer accepted on their property with a first time buyer.
I informed them that our house was off the market and if we are looking to relist, it would be at the original price point we initially listed at (we had to reduce the house price by 25k so the house wasn’t buried in the listings again).
I advised them that the chain was too unstable at this point to entertain anything so for them to contact us again when their buyer had their mortgage offer. I reiterated that the house was off the market and we weren’t looking to list anytime soon so we’re not showing it to anyone else.
Immediately the pressure tactics were applied ‘they will look elsewhere’ ‘you’ll spook the buyer’ etc and I stopped engaging with them.
I then receive 2 emails, one to say they are formally offering on the house and the second to follow up that they are engaging with ‘our buyers’ estate agents to get information required!
I emailed and pointed out that while I was grateful they were liaising with the EA, we don’t have an active contract and therefore we haven’t appointed them to work on our behalf.
I asked if they would be willing to renegotiate their commission based on the current market and to something that was more competitive (1%+VAT) and we would reappoint them and requested a new contract to be issued.
I received an email stating that their clause in their original contract stating if they introduce a buyer to us, we’d be liable to pay them if it went through another estate agent we appointed. I understand this, but they are unwilling to entertain a lower commission.
I then received an email from my solicitor saying they had been advised we were going ahead with the sale and they wanted to double check that was the case! Pardon me?!
I stated I was not willing to go ahead with this buyer unless they reduced the fee and they said, too bad, they can’t go ahead for less than 1.25%+ VAT.
For additional context, the marketing was superb but the premium service we were sold at the time of appointing didn’t come to fruition. The first thing that irked me was when buyer 1 visited the house to look around when we were home then pulled their offer later that day. The owner of the company called to tell us he pulled out and asked US what we said to him that would make him pull out of the sale!! The cheek! We have also felt like they were negotiating with US to lower our price and what we should accept because the market was bad, vs pushing back on the buyers demands (replace all double glazing which is 10 years old so hasn’t reach end of life yet and to line flues for chimneys not in use etc!)
The 4th and final ‘buyer’ lowballed us after their survey and we had to instruct a structural engineer to counteract their surveyors structural claims. Our EA was chasing US on the status of the report, and didn’t even think to chase the buyers on the status of their mortgage application (spoiler, they hadn’t applied for one after 3 months of putting in their offer and nothing structurally wrong with the house!)
It’s been a long running calamity and I was relieved to not have to deal with them.
Am I the one being unreasonable in asking them to review their commission based on the previous service?!
I’d appreciate your views!