Trading Up - EA & Seller want us to sell with same EA

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Pixy91

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We are seriously interested in a house we've seen. The estate agent reckons the seller will take around 207/210,000. We got an approval in principle through a broker for 130,000 (as that's what we asked for) as our house is worth around 140,000 (some of the funds we will keep and some will pay off a debt, around 100,00 will be kept toward our new house). Our application is now gone in for full approval.

The EA selling the house we are interested in has said that the buyer wants us to sell our house through them as they think it'll be easier and less hassle. We are aware our house is in a sought after location for investors and has previously gone sale agreed with 2 weeks of going on the market.

We had been in contact with our old estate agent that our sale fell through with tears ago and had said we would go with them but never signed anything or put up online yet. I feel super bad letting this agent down but I can see why it makes sense to go with the same agent.

I suppose my question is would it be normal to do things this way?
 
You really should do what’s in your best interest, using the sellers EA does not really do you any favours and kind of gives away some information to the seller that you may not share.

in relation to feeling bad about letting the other agent down I promise that your life will be better if you try and take the personal emotions out of dealing with EAs - it’s a business transaction treat it as such. Best of luck! Always a stressful endeavour at the best of times!!
 
Hi Pixy

Turn it around on its head.

Make an offer on the other house and tell the agent that if it's accepted that you will give them the sale of your house.

If the sale falls through on the other side, then the agent loses the sale of your house and you will be paying no fees.

Having said all that, it is extremely unlikely that the vendor has told the estate agent that he wants him to sell your house. So you might not want to deal with an agent who is probably lying to you.

Brendan
 
The above is great advice.

My own experience of going through this recently was that I thought it would make life easier. And had the EA been better maybe it would have. It definitely wasn't. The EA will squeeze every last penny out of you one way or another and you'll have little to no leverage to fight back.

Definitely make it a condition that your offer must be accepted prior to engaging the same EA to sell yours.
 
Did you formally terminate the contract with the previous agent? I've only seen a couple of contracts, but both had clauses that meant you had to terminate the agreement in writing, and failure to do so meant their fees were still payable even if someone else sold the house for you. Some include a 6 month notice period to terminate.

Now, I've no idea how likely the original agent is to pursue you for fees if you do sell the house elsewhere, but it's something you should ensure is sorted out.
 
Pixy91 said:
The EA selling the house we are interested in has said that the buyer wants us to sell our house through them as they think it'll be easier and less hassle. We are aware our house is in a sought after location for investors and has previously gone sale agreed with 2 weeks of going on the market.
Click to expand...

Brendan Burgess said:
Having said all that, it is extremely unlikely that the vendor has told the estate agent that he wants him to sell your house. So you might not want to deal with an agent who is probably lying to you.
Click to expand...

It's almost an absolute certainty that this EA is blatantly lying to you. I don't see how it could benefit you or the seller to use the same EA. The reality is that the EA would be more likely to "encourage" the seller to accept a lower bid from you just to get your business for the next sale. The EA could cost the seller €10k and sacrifice the small commission on this amount to get the next sale from you. Would you then want that same EA to do the same thing to you when selling your home???

You should call their bluff and ask to speak directly to the seller as to why they would want such a scenario...I reckon their would be a lot of excuses as to why that is not possible.

I would be avoiding this one if I was you...
 
I'd avoid this arrangement like the plague.

Use your own EA, it may cost you a bit more if all goes well but it will save you a fortune if all goes badly.
EA cannot serve 2 bosses
 
**UPDATE**

So had a bad night last night, something wasn't sitting right with me and when I read the replies it made me think we shouldn't do it.

I text the EA and he said he would see if the vendor would go ahead if he wasn't selling it. Then got really pushy, we felt pressurised and said yes. Nothing was signed, no deposit paid or anything yet.

We spoke to our original EA and he of course wasn't happy and said the way the other agent went about it was sneaky, especially when we had told him we had another EA and we told him once we didn't want to sell with him.

I was so stressed earlier not knowing what to do that eventually me and Hubby came to the agreement it shouldn't be so stressful this early on so I've told the EA selling the other house that we don't want to sell ours with them and we don't want to go ahead with the other house either. We just feel they aren't an agent we would be comfortable dealing with.
 
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