Q. We recently sold our house via a local, privately owned estate agent. However, the commercial relationship did not get off to a good start and after the sale was eventually agreed, the agent failed to return numerous calls, reply to letters and seemed evasive when we asked him for progress reports. On completion, the agent promptly tendered his bill, £4,000 which we are loathed to pay simply because we do not feel that the agent ‘earned’ his money. Can we object?

A. You can of course object directly to the agent but I do not feel you have any legal grounds to withhold a sum for the perceived poor service. The facts are, albeit that the agent was a poor communicator, that they introduced a buyer who successfully completed a purchase. That is key remit of any estate agent – and whilst I do not condone for one moment the shoddy service and agree with you that the agent could have acted more professionally throughout the transaction, I also believe that the fee is due for securing a successful sale alone. As the agent is privately owned, your options for pursuing a complaint are more limited than a chain-owned agency. If you really must complain, I suggest writing a firm letter outlining the key failures of service as you see them and asking the agent to deduct what he considers a fair sum for this aspect – but I suspect it will be a futile request.

If you’re looking for an estate agent to market your home, take a look at our agent listings on Primelocation.com.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under Estate Agents, Q&A, Selling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.