Advice about outrageous estate agent behaviour

[greenleaf1]

We sold our house in London a couple of months ago. The part of London where we were is home to a large, very particular religious community and they made up over 90% of the market for our house. They have a very specific way of dealing with property purchases and it took a long time to sell the house, and was very difficult.

DH went back to the house today and met our buyer and had a good chat with him. He is very scared and unhappy because the estate agent who sold the house for us apparently charged him £50,000 to put his offer forward to us to give him the advantage over “other bidders”. This estate agent is now threatening him with legal action because he hasn’t paid this £50,000. We are horrified by this. There were no “other bidders” as far as we were aware, but we had many interested viewers from this community and no offers. It seems this estate agent may have been asking for backhanders from other people that never made their way forward to us. We obviously can’t prove this.

What can we do about this? Who do we report this to? I have seen the documents from our buyer - the estate agent has sent him a contract from his own private company with the sum owed for the “introduction” plus VAT. There are also letters from the estate agents solicitor demanding payment. The other complicating issue is that our buyer is scared. He doesn’t want us to use the documents but we can’t let this go. I can’t believe this has gone on behind our backs and we need to get to the bottom of it.

Would really appreciate your advice.

why are you getting involved? Why did your DH even go back to the house several months after you sold it?
Why can't you let it go? Nothing has happened to negatively impact you in any way, only the buyer and he specifically said he doesn't want you to do anything with it, so why on earth would you?

I can't see that a fifty grand introduction fee is at all enforceable but it's the buyer's problem to sort, not yours. If there's that big a community in the area of his religion he'll surely have other people who he can trust to talk to about it, not complete randoms whose only link to him was they used to live in his house.

Find out which professional body the agent belongs to.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/who-regulates-estate-agents/

Really? We spent nearly a year trying to sell this house and it seems this estate agent was actually withholding offers from us unless they paid him a fifty thousand pound fee. You think that’s ok?

Trading standards? Is there an estate agent body you could report them to? Estate agents are the worst

Try the Property Ombudsman - that might be a good place to start

For the fee to be enforceable, the buyer must have signed some sort of contract with the the agent. That’s a question for the buyer - exactly what did they sign up to.

I think this is very serious.

None of this is legal advice, just a way of looking at the matter, so what it's worth...

There would be good reason to suspect that the EA has at least attempted to manipulate the market for their own (undisclosed and outrageous) reasons, which may have been to your detriment. Your potential loss is not having all offers presented to you, no competing bidders, compromising the price etc. EA favouring buyers who will pay them directly. Very difficult to prove a loss (and how much), unfortunately, but possibly worth a go. That's a matter between you (and your lawyers) and the EA.

Further, if true, this could well be fraud, or attempted fraud, so this could be a police matter.

It's vanishingly unlikely you'll ever see any of it, but it seems you may also have an interest in the £50k so called introduction fee. The EA was supposed to be acting in your interests as agent, and if they were keeping backhanders, it's possible that might technically be yours. After all, if someone was willing to pay an additional £50k for your property, why shouldn't that be part of the purchase price? It all depends on what the documents say.

Speaking of which, you really need those documents if you want to progress the matter any further...

Despite all this, it seems highly unlikely you'll see any more money (it'll just be too difficult to get it back). But I'd be outraged and definitely be hard pressuring the agent.

Hard disagree with those who think it's nothing to do with you.

Disgraceful behaviour. Did the buyer sign the contract? First off you need the contract and you need to complain in writing. There must be an ombudsman for Estate Agents perhaps give them a call first for guidance?

A contract cannot be made for an illegal action.

What the EA is doing is illegal so any contract is automatically invalid.

Which is exactly why the contract needs to be examined, to determine whether the terms are illegal or not.

Thanks a lot for this. It’s a helpful perspective, and yes it absolutely does affect us. We had no idea any of this was going on and it is very possible there were other offers out there for our house which were never put forward to us because the buyers refused to pay this outrageous fee.

We do have a copy of the contract this EA made our buyer sign. It is very vaguely worded for “property services” in relation to the purchase of our house. No detail about what those services were. Our buyer was clear that the “service” was to prioritise his offer over others. This was explained verbally - the EA wasn’t daft enough to put any of that in writing.

And yes, I can’t imagine we’ll see any of that £50,000 that the EA is now suing our buyer for, but I’m going to make sure he knows we are on his case.

Thanks again.

Is the reason your buyer is scared because of something to do with dynamics within this community?

If so, I would seek out an "elder" in the community to talk to and get advice from, without mentioning names or producing paperwork.

I suppose if you were to sue the EA for lack of competition/bids, they would just fold their personal company and you would get nothing.

Any more detail you can give us?

I am very shocked by this post. I would not let it drop. It says something about the power this EA holds if none of your viewers got in touch afterwards to tell you what they were up to.

Certainly not kosher.

I think the EA has probably shot themself in the foot, and serves them right.

If OP accuses the EA of withholding potential bids, thus OP losing out on a higher price/other offers presumably the EA will say “this was the only offer”.

The buyer is then in a position where they could say “why do I owe you £50,000 for prioritising my offer above others if there were no others?”

It doesn’t matter what the contract says. The estate agent is acting unlawfully. The contract terms don’t and can’t change that.

I would urge the buyer to report this to the police. I know of other instances of fraudulent behaviour within this local area and it may be part of a pattern.

I wouldn't get involved yes the agent could've sold your house earlier and maybe got you some more money but presume you had it valued by more than one

Is it unknown agent? Like an independent or something. If the guy who bought your home wants to bring a case then they'll probably call you, the authorities, but I don't think I'll get into it before.

Also, can you really trust what the buying guy has said

Conditional selling is illegal so I’d be surprised that there is any enforceable contract in place between the buyer and estate agent.

I think you have a right to want to know what happened as there is a chance you did not get the best price for your house. Estate agents will happily push for acceptance of offers that benefit them over your best interests.

There is no contract, its invalid.

It is illegal for EA to charge for bid priority and refuse to hand over offers. There is no 'service' that the buyer can legally acquire from and EA that could cost £50k.

He could well be scared because of dynamics in the community. It is an extremely close knit and more or less closed community and we’re not entirely sure what this particular estate agents relationship is with community members. Though he was working for a mainstream, high street estate agents. It would be a great idea to talk to an ‘elder’ but that is impossible for us as non- community members. I’m not going to spell out which community it is, but a couple of people on the thread appear to have guessed already. We have had huge problems selling our house. I’m not going to share all the details on here, but if anyone is interested they can DM me.

Thanks everyone for your advice and concern. I really appreciate it.

I'm not a lawyer, but surely this is a police or trading standards issue as it's unlawful? I do think it's everyone's business to act when they have good reason to think a crime has been committed so there are no more victims in future.

You are the third person to say that. In the words of Basil Fawlty, please try to understand before one of us dies.

The point is the contract may well be invalid, but you need to have sight of what it actually says before you can determine that for certain.

I have a screenshot of the contract

If this is a high street chain, have you contacted head office complaints, assuming that branch may be dodgy, so above them? Sounds like they've probably extended the time your property took to sell with their demands for extra cash, and as you said not passed on offers from those they would not be getting backhanders from.

Thanks. We are certainly not going to let it drop.