Phoned our estete agent yesterday because our house wasn't in the paper and there was a couple of things we wern't happy with but having spoke to them I'm now really unhappy with them and want to get shut.

When I looked yesterday they want 60 days notice, nothing was mentioned about this when we signed up (I know I should have asked) and it was hidden away on the back of the form we signed about fee's (didn't even know it was there).

I know I made some mistakes (loads) but they have not done anything we have asked, told them we were unhappy with pics and asked them to redo, they haven't. Asked them to put no chain in advert/web page, they haven't. Meant to have review every month I've had to phone up and request this. I don't think that we are getting the service they offered us, especially as they say weekly advertising in the press and now tell us that it's on a rota and we won't be in every week.

Is there any way we can get out of the agreement before 60days?

Sharon

Hi Sharon

Sorry not an expert on English property law but do you have small claims courts in England and have you paid fees up front? If so i'd suggest threatening to take them to the small claims court for a refund, citing breach of contract. That should get them to drop the 60 days. It would probably need you to have all your requests to them in writing as evidence that you didn't receive the service you requested.

Slightly more straightforward if you have evidence of them not fulfilling your requests, would be just to move and let them sue you. I understand thats probably not an attractive option, who wants the risk of a letter from the court overshadowing your move.

Sorry hopefully someone with more experience can assist.

Chin up

Tom

Hi Sharon,

Sorry to hear that you are having problems with your estate agent. You really don't want to hear what I think about them. First things first. The 60 day notice is not the problem here if you have not signed with them a sole agents. Have you signed up with them a sole agents? You need to read carefully it this is the case. If this is the case then not sure what their reaction would be if you approached other agent.

However, if you have not given them sole agency on your property then all you have to do is to sign up with other agents and get them to market your property agressively. We had a similar problem about 10 year ago. Husband signed up with an agent but they were really underhand. They tried to sell our house to a person who worked in one of their other offices. I only found this out when I visited their offices and read something upside on the guys desk. I called OH immediately and said that we would not be dealing with them anymore. We told the agency that no matter who they were going to send round to view our house that no time would be convenient. They soon got the message. We did reports them to ARLA (I think that is what it was called back then).

I know that it must be incredibly frustrating but for future reference, never ever give sole rights to any agent. They become very complacent when they have no competition.

We have just rented out our house in the UK. Originally, gave one agent one month to get it rented. After that we listed it with two other agents. Amazing what competition will do. Tenants move in this week. Thank God.

Not sure what else to suggest but hang on in there.

Good luck

Alro

The main thing it to find out what exactly you have signed up to.

Best advise i can give is call another agent, explain your situation and see what they say ??

All agents are different, our last agent decided to market our house and advertise my telephone number :curse: luckily the day before as i was unhappy with them sending older people to view a 4bedroom house when they didnt need that size of house, i gave them 14 days notice by email, advising them i was unhappy etc etc etc
Within 30mins of hitting send they rang me, told them what i thought and the 14days will stand

The day after when i saw the advert they got another email advising as they had broke the contract then the 14days was being cancelled, theyd better take our details of there website within 24hrs and the sign they had 48hrs to remove.
Well the call i got was shocking...creeping etc but stood firm and instrucked the new lot in, they arent that fantastic, but better the devil you know (used them before)

Read all the small print and see if you can find something they hvent done, by the looks of things they could be loads......good luck
Gill

Same advice as above but I really wanted to say Sorry for all the Crap they are putting you and your family through.:curse:

Sending you some karma

I would send karma, but they have advise need to spread it around abit :curse:

"what are they trying to say"

Puh! It's too early to be playing typing - just lost my rant!

I would go into your agents with a list of your complaints and demand to be released from your contract as they are not fulfilling their obligations.

Good luck - house selling and buying is NOT something I miss about the UK.

Okay, I'm no legal expert but based on what little I do know about the law here's what I would do:

Just write to them telling them you are terminating their agency with immediate effect. Then appoint a new estate agent.

Clearly they won't be happy but they until you actually sell your house through this new agent there wouldn't really be any point them taking you to court since one of the principals of law is that not only would they have to show you were in breach of contract they would also have to demonstrate "loss". In practice their "loss" would be the commission they missed out on if another agent sold your house and got the comission instead during this 60 day period (the time during which they should have been "under notice" that you were terminating). It would be really difficult for them to claim they suffered a loss owing to a supposed future comission they might have got when the house hadn't actually sold yet.

If, by good fortune, the new agents do sell your property during these 60 days then your old agents would probably be able to demonstrate loss but, lets face it, as soon as you sell your house you are probably going to be leaving the country and moving to Canada. So how realistic do you think it would be that they would try to sue you for a small sum (in the overall scheme of things) from the UK while you are living in Canada. As they would have very little prospect of actually being able to enforce a Court Judgement and recover the lost commission I would think realistically any lawyer would probably advise them not to bother.

The risk is very small therefore. You need to balance this with the risk of not selling your house because your agents are crap. That's a much bigger risk with much more serrious consequences so focus on doing whatever you need to do to get your house sold and to hell with your agents!

I should also add this - try not to waste any more time on them. Don't get involved in a big pre-legal letter writing dispute. You have more important things to concentrate on (like getting the house sold) and discussing the past with your old agents when you sack them isn't one of them.

Just let them know that they are sacked, they may not like it but thats just the way it is so hard luck and that you wont discuss it any further with them. If they want to go to court thats up to them but you have more important things to do. And then move on and concentrate on the future.

Oh goodness sake, that's that last stress you need right now. Can you prove that they have not met part of their bargain. There must be clauses in the agreement to which they have to adhere and if so you could give them notice in writing stating the reason why your terminating your contract with them, ie, they made a promise of a weekly advert in papers, to which you are paying for and this has not been fulfilled. At least if they were to try it on and pull the 60 day thing as a reason why you can't go elsewhere/owe them cash you have a written list of reasons which they cannot argue. You can also prove that of course your property wasn't in the paper on the weekly basis promised. :curse:

Sorry probably not much help but sending you loads of Karma and hope you sell very quickly.

We had a similar problem, sacked the first agent; promised the earth and delivered nothing.
Our sole agent contract required 14 days notice.
BUT another small clause inserted on the bad, in very small writing, stated that even after another agent took our house, if we sold to anyone who they had had any negotiations with, we would be liable for two sets of agents fees!
We managed to agree with the new agent that should this occur we would only pay them a withdrawal fee of £150.00
SO I suggest you are very careful and talk to both sets of agents before ffinalizinganything.
They are very crafty.
My original agent also stated that they were pursuing someone who had gone to Australia for fees!!

if your not with either of these 2, bridgford or bairstow eves then approach them. they are part of the largest group, countrywide. ask to speak to the manager and they will help you

Sorry, but the one I sacked was part of Bairstow Eves, initially thats why we went with them - but there was no personal touch or consistency.
We changed to a small local agent, sold within a month and got constant update on progress etc., and the fees were less!
I would suggest looking very carefully at the small print in the contract and their procedures during and after a sale.
A large part of thier work comes after the sale, chasing everything through.
Good luck.

Hi
We also had probs selling, little or no publicising of our property. We were told to make sure that when we changed they were on Right Move as the website is viewed by thousands. We sold really quickly, and could check out how many people were looking at the details of our property and whether they were then asking for viewings.
Hope this helps.
Best wishes
Rosie

my neighbour has just sacked his estate agent as he has not had 1 person through their door and the house has been on since the first week in augtoday he pulled down the sing chucked it in the boot of his car and drove it to the agent telling them to get stuffedwe are still waiting to see if the couple are buying our house as they are now going to see a finacial adviser to day so another day of waiting