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.

Its awful behaviour and may be illegal but I would imagine that it would need to be the house buyer who made a complaint rather than you and if they won't I think you will have to let it drop. It would be hard to prove this had disadvantaged you

Tell the buyer to discuss this with the community elders? They (buyers) will not want to make waves if they rely on the community.

Yes it is a high street chain, and what you suggest is definitely one of the things we’ll do. Although the EA in question seems to have an arms length relationship with the agency, and the contract for,our buyer was not in the agency’s name, but in the name of his own property company.

I think there are estate agents who work for buyers and charge a finders fee. If that’s what your buyer signed up for it doesn’t seem illegal or unreasonable. The issue I think you have is that your estate agent has an undisclosed conflict of interest if he was working for you through his employer and on the side for the buyer. I think his employer should be interested and since you had a contractual relationship with them that’s where I’d start.

This sounds very strange and potentially fraudulent 😬

I suspect it’s in his own name because he’s doing it behind the agency’s back and because he has no intention of giving that money to the agency…

@greenleaf1 Pursue compensation from the estate agency that the EA works for.

Presumably your contract was with the large high-street chain and you have already paid your commission to them, report to the HQ of the agency. The EA may not be the only one behaving like this at the branch so go straight to the HQ not the branch management, who may be from the same clan/community.

What the EA personally gains = what you lose as buyer = loss to the agency as well. Any sensible management will investigate. And this is also a matter for trading standards/TPO and the police.

When you report to the authorities, make sure you lead with the estate agency then the individual EA. The EA is a bad apple that the agency needs to be held responsible for. Its their lack of oversight that has given rise to this type of behaviour.

As an average person, this sounds wild! I would just send all the info to a news outlet, you will get some visibility and likely quicker outcome regarding the current situation and also bring the practise to light. Maybe other people will come out of the woodwork. If it is illegal then the police will have a lot more evidence to go on.

It’s a long time ago, but I reported the agents who sold my first house and got a thorough (and fairly quick) response.

Are you the EA in question. I hope nothing bad ever happens to you and everyone turns a blind eye.! The OP may have lost out on money, nobody knows.
Could he fraud or attempted fraud, I’d gather what evidence you have and contact the police together if possible.

I’d be tempted to go to the police. Never mind the ombudsman. This is gaining money by deception.

Why are you speaking to a stranger who bought your house? It's none of your business.

The bloke who's allegedly owing the money to the EA needs to deal with it himself. Obviously how the hell do you know any of this is true? You say that this community have very different ways of dealing with property so you don't have a clue what went on.

You sold it to him. That's the end of the story as far as you're concerned.

The EA should be in prison for extortion I’ve never heard of such a thing before.

Please explain how the contact CAN be legal?

Your arguing that something entirely illegal might magically become legal if you read a piece of paper. There is literally no legal action where an EA can charge a BUYER £50k unless a very specific contract was made with the seller to transfer the responsibility of EA fee from the Seller to the Buyer. The seller is telling us they had no knowledge of this, therefore that which is the only legally valid way to transfer EA fee to a buyer could not have been done.

Forgot to ask, in the Orthodox community they aren't able, for religious reasons, to go about mortgages the same way, due to the charging or paying of interest. Loan paperwork has to be arranged and worded in a certain way to bypass it being called interest, to adhere to certain rules.
Wondering if in the contract you saw he was drawing up their purchase and mortgage paperwork too, and charging for that service, as the fee is so high? Perhaps if the Estate Agency can't talk directly to the community and don't offer that, he is more of a necessary contact, rather than their employee.

In the buyers position I would allow the EA to take me to court and raise a defence involving attempted fraud and harassment. A contract can have any terms in it but they are not enforcable if against common law. I am sure there are suitably qualified people in the buyers community who can advise him on the law or represent him.

Estate agents are reptiles (and that an insult to reptiles). One of my relatives who is renting has a long list of laws that the EA has broken. Including fraud, extortion, harassment and breaches of housing law. The EA recently tried something else on and was presented with a list of his misdeeds and a threat to counter sue and go to the media. The EA has now gone very quiet because they know they are over a barrel.

Our buyer arranged his mortgage separately through a broker within his community, it had nothing to do with the estate agent. So that’s wasn’t Included in this “fee”

Absolutely. I really hope he does stick to his guns and refuses to pay this fee, but I’ve seen the letters he’s received from the estate agent’s solicitor and they are very serious about enforcing payment.

Because the agent did not put all the viewers forward that were interested in the property! It is appalling. Of course it has affected the OP - she did not get the viewings if people did not agree to make the payments. I cannot see how this is a difficult for you to understand. She potentially could have received more and better offers and has possibly lost money due to this (potentially illegal) activity.

He came to introduce himself before we completed the sale. So he’s not a stranger. And yes it absolutely is our business if the estate agent we paid a very generous commission to was also taking payment from our buyer. He was supposed to be working for us and that is a blatant conflict of interest. There is also a good chance we were losing out on other potential buyers because they told him where he could shove his “fee for property services”. I’ve seen all the documents, so yes it’s true.

Estate agent yourself, are you?

Because they engaged a fraudulent agent and have a duty of care to their buyer. Morally if not legally.

I'd tell him to tell the agent that his solicitor has contacted the seller's solicitor to verify that no other offers were put forward to them and if the agent pressurises him about this again, he will be charged with extortion. he has had his portion of money from the buyer via the percentage from the sale, agreed with the vendors..

Thanks again for your support and advice here. It took us a year to sell our house because of the antics of this community. I’m not going to go into detail here, but it was extremely stressful. We’ve now moved to a lovely part of the country but this latest twist has brought it all back!

I’m going to do what I can and I’ll keep you posted

Thanks. This is a good idea.

This is absolutely illegal and no doubt would have impacted your sale. Id be getting legal advice.

Contact the property ombudsman, they can deal with it if the estate agent is registered with them (I have a query with them at the moment) you have to complain to the estate agent 1st and they have something like 6 weeks to give you an official response (can’t remember a more accurate timescale sorry) I actually got the contact details for the right person to complain to from the ombudsman.

edited to add I was fobbed off by the financial ombudsman 1st and only rang the other number just in case she they said they could help - not sure if they actually will yet as still waiting for a decision from the estate agent.