help re: makelaar
 

Hi,

I hope you can give me some advice on the situation I am in with my makelaar.

Over 2.5 yrs ago we arranged for a local makelaar to sell our house for us and in a 2 year period we had hardly any interest in our house and weren't happy with his services and told him we are going to use another makelaar. Within 6 months the new makelaar has sold our house but we have since received a bill from our old makelaar asking for €4600 within 14 days or the amount will be deducted from our house sale via the notaris.His bill is for the total amount had he sold our house.

The costs for our new makelaar come to just over €2000 and we signed the paperwork for her to go ahead with the sale.

I contacted the notaris and he said he had received a courtage note from the old makelaar and €4600 would be deducted from the sale of the house.

My question is can he do this when the old makelaar didn't sell my house ?

Hope someone can help me or give me a link to free legal advice ?

Cheers,
Ian

Re: help re: makelaar
 

Hi Ian,

you would need to get somebody to check the original contract with the first estate agent. If you have agreed to pay all costs involved even if they dont sell, or there is a clause including a percentage of the courtage if sold by another agent, then you will probably have to pay. You could also check with your present makelaar if the claim is legit as well.

We had the same problem many years ago. We tried selling our house with a local makelaar, but pulled it out after 12 months of wasting our time. We sold it ourselves within a week.

The makelaar sent us a bill for advertising/photos etc etc, but we only finally paid half the bill after some heated phonecalls. They even tried to charge us for photos of the neighbours flat ! :mad:

Hopefully the makelaar is trying things on a bit, and you can beat him down a bit.

Good luck

Paul.

Re: help re: makelaar
 

Alright mate,

thought you would have been in Oz by now.The Mrs and kids have been there since October and hopefully I should be joining them soon.

Going to the Juridisch Loket (free legal advies) on Tuesday to see what they say. I dont mind paying for his advertising costs and a small percentage but will be well fooked off if he gets his hands on the full whack when he never sold the house. If thats the case i'll print off thousands of leaflets telling people not to use his services and post them in his area :D

Cheers
Ian

Re: help re: makelaar
 

Hi Ian,

I can understand your feelings about not wanting to pay 2 estate agents full whack. Its expensive enough with just the 1 to pay for.

We have an open house this Saturday for our house so fingers crossed we can complain about estate agents fees in a couple of weeks :p

If all goes weel, we will be going out at the end of July. Waiting for the last formalities for the visa, and need to sell the house a bit quick so I can start booking flights etc.

Good luck with the final stages, and hope you get some joy with the legal advice.

Paul.