Agent's commission due if selling house direct??

[stevesmith]

Firstly - great forum and wish I'd found it sooner!

Quick question if anyone can help - my wife and I currently live in New Zealand and have been renting our UK property through a letting agent. We're more than happy with them but are now in a position where we may want to sell up. We suspect the tenant may be interested in purchasing.....

Question is - are we in a position to liaise with the tenant directly to guage interest - and if so - would our letting agent lay claim to commission on a sale due to them technically introducing the tenant to us....

We were considering managing the whole thing direct, with the input of our solicitors.

Not sure on the standpoint here so if anyone could help out - really grateful for some feedback....

Cheers
Steve

[Rooftile]

Most Letting agents have a provision for this in their agency agreement. Have a look at this if you have it to hand. It is quite normal for the agency to take a fee if the tenant buys. If this is the case then you should ideally use the agency to negotiate and progress the sale.

[stevesmith]

Thanks for that - I thought that would be the case and had looked at the agreement. Didn't see anything obvious though.

Cheers
Steve

[islandgirl]

maybe it's just me but what has the agent done to get anything out of a sale. He/She found a tenant (not a buyer). They were presumably paid for this. They then probably took a % of the rent as management fee every month. Why should they now get a piece of the pie if the poster and his solicitor do all the work themselves?
I would find out if the people really want to buy, give the agent appropriate notice then sell to them myself - would this be really wrong and if so why?

[Paul_f]

Most Letting agents have a provision for this in their agency agreement. Have a look at this if you have it to hand. It is quite normal for the agency to take a fee if the tenant buys. If this is the case then you should ideally use the agency to negotiate and progress the sale. NO! NO! NO! How many times do I have to say this? There is no chance of the landlord being liable to an agent for any such clause, as it comes within the Estate Agents Act 1979 and needs to be a completely separate contract. If your tenant wants to buy then you owe the agent diddly squat!

[Rooftile]

Apologies, I stand corrected.

With this in mind and if the Landlord would like the agency to negotiate a price and progress the sale, terms should be negotiated separately and a 'Residential Sales Agreement' should be signed.

[Paul_f]

You're along the right lines but there's much more to it than you have said; it's all to do with the Provision of Information Regulations 1991 under the EAA 1979 concerning the sale of property. The letting of a property is completely separate to the implied potential sale to a tenant. That's where the letting agent's terms of business would fail if such a clause were included.