can an estate agent do this ?
Discussion
i put a house on the market in december 2007 with a well known estate agent. at the time i was in no hurry to sell, and actually wanted to buy another house the agent was marketing. the house went on the market, and they asked for us to agree to some expensive local advertising and some expensive glossy brochures, which if they sold the house wouldn't be a problem. a year later we've never had a viewing and haven't had a word from the agent in nearly a year. now they are chasing us for payment of the photos and advertising and have finally issued a debt collection company letter...I suspect in their small print (though i need to check) that they 'reserve the right' to invoice me for this whether they sell the house or not...clearly the house isn't going to sell given the climate....so cant they legally chase me for doing....well not a lot really....any advice ?
so you agreed to pay for brochures etc and now you dont want to pay for them?
You were not in a hurry to sell aka you didnt price the property to sell, thus it didnt sell.
Pay up. You've asked them to produce the brochures, wernt in a hurry to sell, they have & it hasnt. Are you suprised?
ps the house WILL sell in the current climate - just perhaps not the price you want.
You were not in a hurry to sell aka you didnt price the property to sell, thus it didnt sell.
Pay up. You've asked them to produce the brochures, wernt in a hurry to sell, they have & it hasnt. Are you suprised?
ps the house WILL sell in the current climate - just perhaps not the price you want.
Edited by superlightr on Friday 14th November 12:39
Edited by superlightr on Friday 14th November 12:40
i wouldn't have a problem with paying if they had made any effort to sell the property in 12 months. the costs we negotiated were for a service to sell the property. the costs of the sale would have been met by the sale of the house. thats perfectly logical. anyone can print some brouchures and put an advert in a newspaper. thats not 'selling' or 'marketing' a property. they suggested the selling price, not me.
not had any stats from their website, no calls from the agent handling the sale. the only thing we had was a letter recently suggesting we reduce the price...well it doesn't take a genius to work out the price will have fallen in certainly the last 6 months at least. was it over priced to start with ? i don't know. thats the estate agents job ! we had valuations from 3 and they were all within £10k of each other. Anyway, thats not my complaint. my complaint is, how can i reasonably pay for some photos and an advert - when i have seen zero results. for all I know they've done nothing. what is also interesting is that the small print says that they can demand a £250 + VAT withdrawal fee if we take it off the market with them...admittedly i didn't spot that. just to repeat...had they been trying their hardest to sell it, and been talking to me, then I wouldn't have an issue with paying them.
I'd have thought you would be perfectly justified in discussing the fee & asking for evidence of what service they provided for that fee. You can then check it against the contract you signed & note any differences.
If you had no contact with the agent in 12 months, you didn't call them to er, motivate them a little? I certainly would have.
Don't forget, putting a board up outside your house is "advertising & marketing" & may well be all they needed to do in order to meet their contractural requirements.
If you had no contact with the agent in 12 months, you didn't call them to er, motivate them a little? I certainly would have.
Don't forget, putting a board up outside your house is "advertising & marketing" & may well be all they needed to do in order to meet their contractural requirements.
i phoned them twice to come and put their signs (two) back up when they blew down last winter. eventually i got bored of them blowing down for third time so fixed them myself. maybe i should have realised at the time...if they can't get a wooden post to stay in the ground after 2 attempts, what chance did they have of successfully selling the house...when you pay a 'premium' estate agent to sell your house (keyword is sell) and you agree to pay a premium, then you expect a bit more than a sign outside and a piccy on a website and some glossy brochures. if my business did that then we wouldn't have survived 3 years...waiting for customers to turn up. with regards to why didn't i chase them...well to be honest, thats their job. i shouldn't have to recruit their services, only to have to chase them. i accept that the housing market is broken. but it wasn't between december 2007 and july 2008 - i you believe our depressing british news
sjr-997 said:
i phoned them twice to come and put their signs (two) back up when they blew down last winter. eventually i got bored of them blowing down for third time so fixed them myself. maybe i should have realised at the time...if they can't get a wooden post to stay in the ground after 2 attempts, what chance did they have of successfully selling the house...when you pay a 'premium' estate agent to sell your house (keyword is sell) and you agree to pay a premium, then you expect a bit more than a sign outside and a piccy on a website and some glossy brochures. if my business did that then we wouldn't have survived 3 years...waiting for customers to turn up. with regards to why didn't i chase them...well to be honest, thats their job. i shouldn't have to recruit their services, only to have to chase them. i accept that the housing market is broken. but it wasn't between december 2007 and july 2008 - i you believe our depressing british news
While you are correct, you are also wrong.When the market was booming you would very much have had to do all the chasing for your sale. Agents would have been focussing 100% on the easy commission.
I suspect that you possibly managed to come across to the agent as harder work than other vendors and as such were pretty much ignored.
Price is everything. If a property is on a website, in a window and in a paper then it would have sold if the price was right.
Small print will tend to screw you and you are generally at the mercy of having to play their game.
The whole premis of the last 10 years in this country has been to pay someone a fee for something where you end up still doing most of the work. Thankfully those people are now getting their arses handed to them but unfortunately they are taking a few real workers down with them.
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