I havent accumulated 130 properties, but My family and I were on Today Tonight last night, channel 7 6:30pm.
To cut a long story short…
We had our house in Brooklyn sold at Auction last year, the buyers pullout only a few days before settlement. The Real Estate Agent “Burnham Real Estate” did not bank the deposit cheque for $23,400. So we had no sale and no deposit to cover our inconvenience.In the background to this, we created a web page outlining our problems with Aussie Home Loans, Wizard Home Loans and Burnham Real Estate.
Since then we have been given a cheque from Wizard to cover our Loan applicatin fee, a cheque from Aussie Home Loans for $3000 to cover the costs of a land loan we had with them, they stuffed us around, even after the loan was paid in full, they deducted payments still, and keep the title on the land, so when we went to settle the land, it was delayed due to Aussie.
The next stage is to go Burnham for the $23,400.
The web page has since been removed as this was the agreement with Aussie so we get the compensation cheque.
And we all got our mugs on TV, the kids playing Hungry Hungry Hippo too !
[
]Regards,
Arty.Yeh I saw that lastnight
Goodluck !!![
]Ripp..Thank you for the luck, we are going to need some…
Regards,
Arty.
[]Arty
thanks for the heads up I do think you helped a lot of us nieve ones to think twice check three times I heard someone call this sort of thing a trogen horse looks innocent on the out side but pock around inside as much as you can thanks again
aaronNo problems, the document you need to get to your deposit is a “Section 27”.
I would suggest to anyone to apply for this as soon as your sale contracts are signed…. just be on the safe side.Regards,
Arty.
[]Arty,
Good luck in your dealings with the agents.Are you going to hit them up for a breach of contract or malpractice?
I’ve had a run in with a Real Estate Agent in Victoria who tried to double dip on the agents commission – it was plain robbery but I was forced to pay it or go to court and lose.
The agent in the property’s suburb couldn’t sell the place so they gave it to their sister agency in the adjacent suburb who sold it in a week – then both argued that they had a role in the sale and wanted the full commission…each! [xx(]
I had a big wig on my side and was told that with this mob, they are reknown for ripping off their clients and they had moved one particular agent from the City down to the Mornington Peninsula so he could hook into all the retirees…[
!]I learned a big lesson from that nasty experience (about 10 years ago).
All the best.
Cheers,
Rowan
I know it is an old story by now Rowan but I am just curious whether you signed an agreement with the second real estate office or whether they merely got a conjunction.
I guess you’ve had legal advice at the time.
BTW if we don’t report bad experiences then those people will continue to rip off others.
Pisces133
Rowan we had our solicitor look into it for us, and he said that the Real Estate Agent was at fault, not banking the cheque that was given to him at the time the proposed buyers gave them the cheque.
We also asked about it through REIV, they said if we tried, the most the agent will get is a warning/wrap on the knuckles.
So if we have to, we will bug them to death.
Regards,
Arty.
[]Arty
just remembered check out http://www.notgoodenough.org this mob are becoming a real thorn in the side of business so much so businesses check out the site (another ali)
aaronAaron thanks for the URL..
[8D]
Arty,
I seen it on today tonight as well.
Your bad luck already gone, so the good luck is coming your way.
Kind regards
Chandara
[Keep going, you’re nearly reach the end of financial freedom]Thank you Chan, things are starting to improve on the financial side now…
Regards,
Arty.
[]Hi Peter,
I know it is an old story by now Rowan but I am just curious whether you signed an agreement with the second real estate office or whether they merely got a conjunction. <snip>We signed a contract for sale for 90 days, during which time the first agents did not sell the property. They got a deposit for the house, (from a mate of the real estate agent) who subsequently folded and ran.
After the 90 days, they offered to move the property to the nearby sister agent. I suggested that we needed to draw up a new contract of sale, but the original agent baulked at that saying that “we all work under the one company logo!”.
Yeah, I know, alarm bells were ringing at the time. [
]I persisted and got a fresh contract of sale drawn up with the new agent, who managed to sell the property about a week after signing the new sale contract. Yippee, I thought…job done [8D]
Then, after the deposit was paid and we were rapidly closing in on settlement, the original shyster politely asked me for the commission. I told him that I would be paying it, in full, to the agent who sold the property (and not him!).
This clown argued that he had effectively introduced the buyer to the seller (?!?) and was expecting to be paid for services rendered [?]
I told him that he could take that to the sister agency and see if they will pay him half the commission. After all “they all work under the one company logo…”!! [
]He threatened to take it to court, had a court summons issued at me ?! and then kept ringing me and my wife. We are talking about a commission of about $1500 here – not exactly earth shattering stuff, but the agency was on it’s knees and was not afraid to stoop to any measure to get cashflow.
A friend of my late father (QC) offered to advise me pro bono and said my chances at best were 50/50. I talked to the REIV who knew of them and said they had a track record of doing this in Melbourne and had been run out of town accordingly. Oh, and they couldn’t do anything either (sounds familiar, eh Arty? [
] )To avoid a possible loss and court costs, I paid 2 lots of $1500, cursed all the agents on the Mornington Peninsula and moved on with my life.
Cheers,
Rowan
Arty – sounds like negligence to me. REIV is not the way to go. Remember that they are an industry body formed and run by real estate agents. You should be talking to a solicitor about commencing legal proceedings.
Rowan – everyone scoffs at us lawyers when we tell them to get releases from open-ended contracts. But I think your example clearly highlights the need. Even a letter from the real estate agent confirming that your contract with them is terminated may be good enough. But you needed to extract that when they were still trying to get you to sign up with the other agency, because that was when you had the upper hand. Fortunately, it’s only a $1,500 lesson.
Cheers
MElysium-M are you a lawyer ?
We had our solicitor chase the buyers and the agent, it was going in circles so we pulled the plug on the solicitor before the solicitor fees started to build up.
We are still chasing the agent ourselves through annoyance mainly.
Regards,
Arty.
[]Hi M,
Rowan – everyone scoffs at us lawyers when we tell them to get releases from open-ended contracts. But I think your example clearly highlights the need. Even a letter from the real estate agent confirming that your contract with them is terminated may be good enough. But you needed to extract that when they were still trying to get you to sign up with the other agency, because that was when you had the upper hand. <snip>Quite true…With 20/20 hindsight, I should not have assumed that the agent would honour the terms of the contract of sale and release all parties concerned at the end of 90 days. As you suggest, I should have got that in writing.
My problem was that the Victorian Land Act which covered and to some extent defined the contract of sale was not definitive and thus open to legal interpretation (like most Acts I suspect). According to the contract of sale, my obligation to honour the sole agency provisions of the first agent had concluded without a sale and I assumed that the contract would expire on the date that we both signed to, which was clearly stated on the contract letter.
I figured that the second contract of sale with the sister agent would assume the sole rights to manage the sale of the property and not simply extend the rights of the original agent to include some benefit at actual sale time. What happened if the second agent was a totally separate entity, ie, an agent from somewhere else in town or another company? Would the original agent still try to hit me up for the commission? The answer is probably yes, given the track record of this agent…
I agree with you in that you can take nothing for granted, and I had wrongly assumed that all parties would play in accordance with the contracts of sale – otherwise, why have them??
The easy answer to all this is…never sell [
]Cheers,
Rowan
Arty – that’s my day job. And sometimes my night job too [
]Maybe you need to find a good, aggressive lawyer.
You also need to know what you want. I keep telling people that most lawyers are only as good as what you tell them to do.
You need to tell your lawyer that you want to recover the deposit from both the agent and the buyer – send them a warning letter, and issue proceedings 7-14 days after. If it’s as straightforward as you described, tell him to seek summary judgment as soon as legally possible.
I don’t know the full circumstances of your situation, so I may be wrong – maybe there was a defect in the sale contract or the agency contract, or the conduct of the parties – that’s what you need your lawyer to tell you too. If he tells you that it’s got a 50/50 chance of success but doesn’t have a good reason for that opinion (eg a specific clause in the contract), ditch him and challenge him on why you should pay for a shoddy job.
Cheers
MP.S. Here’s the lawyer blurb – this post is not intended to and does not constitute legal advice – I’m merely trying to point you in the right direction so that you can get some good legal advice.
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