Following on from the Estate agents question...

[Hgrove]

particularly Lady_p_gold answer, what I don't understand is this: let's say you sign up with an estate agent and then they don't produce a buyer or you decide you don't want to move anymore... And then, sometime in the future you do sell up. Will the estate agents be able to come after you forever, claiming the buyer saw their board one, two, three, seven years ago? When are you at last safe from their attacks?

[themas]

I think this depends on what is in the contract when you enter into it. I believe most of them have a time limit in. If they don't they should have, and the agent would probably have great difficulty proving someone had seen their Board and bought as a result if there was a long time gap.

[Hgrove]

Well, in the example given by Lady_p_gold about a friend of hers, the contract had been terminated for 18 months. So I thought, once the contract has terminated, that should be it. Yet in that example, the estate agent managed to convice a judge that the buyer had seen their board 18 months earlier! I find it appalling this case was even started, never mind won by the estate agent!

[buildersmate]

Faced with this potential situation when I changed Agents, I wrote to Agent 1 stating that I considered that there were no outstanding potential buyers that they had introduced, and that if they disagreed with me would they please put it in writing within two weeks staing who they considered was still an active potential buyer. Its a bit belt and braces, but I don't trust those terribly nice chappies either.

[lady_p_gold]

Just to elaborate in case of confusion, this was back in the days when estate agents did not always pass on offers which they thought were too low because of course they get less commission. Now they have to pass on offers so that has been sorted. My friend was in desperate need of a sale and Mr X made an offer through the estate agent. They did not pass on the offer. In desperation when the house did not sell he rented it out. Then one day at the post office he got chatting to a neighbour a year and a half later and he said 'oh I always wanted to buy that house but you turned down my offer' .. so my friend said 'what offer?' He was furious as he would have sold at the lower figure as he was in serious financial need at the time. So he sold to the chap and never thought about the agents all that time ago and the property had been rented out for over a year since then. Then he got a bill for the commission and was incensed that they were charging when they had taken it upon themselves not to pass on this genuine offer. He refused to pay and so the court case ensued and that is when it was decided that the guy had originally been aware that the property was for sale, by seeing the board. Unfair or what !

[Hgrove]

Very unfair Lady_p_gold, as the estate agent should not have benefited from his own bad deed.