The private sale.
One thing that infuriates me in this industry is the fact you can do all the work, the advertising, the viewings, the chasing viewers and then in one simple swoop the vendor can take the house off the market. No fees payable.
That is annoying however when you find out later on down the line that the vendor has done a private sale with a person you booked in to view the house that really p****s me off.
Here's a prime example and a true story.
We were marketing a property for a good 7-8 weeks, we had 8 viewings but sadly no offers. The property was a character full cottage, feature beams, large solid wood front door, oak flooring, sash windows it was lovely. We booked the ninth viewing with the applicant and the vendor and as you do in this industry 24 hours later we made the follow up call. The response from Mrs F (name changed to comply with my no names policy!) was that it was "too small" for her. We reported this back to the vendor and continued to market the cute cottage.
2 days later we receive a call from the vendor who informs us that due to family circumstances we had to stop marketing, they were moving a family member in to rent it for 6 months but they would come back to us to sell it in 6 months time. We did as we were told and removed it from the market.
9 weeks later one of the girls in the office sent a bulk email to our database with our new instructions. We then receive an email from Mrs F stating that she was buying a property privately and provided the full address. This full address was indeed the house that she had viewed through us. We got hold of the original vendor and advised them that we knew they had done a private deal and we would be collecting our commission when it completes. They initially denied it.
The next day they vendors called the office and told us that they had done a private deal but it was Mrs Fs idea and it would save them our fee. It turns out that during the private sale both parties had a huge fall out with each other (which is why Mrs F responded to our email). It was her way of getting back at the vendors. The problem was that it backfired on her. The vendors insisted that because it was her idea to do the sale privately if she wanted the house she would have to pay extra to cover our fee.
The end result was that the house did complete and Mrs F did buy it. Because of the massive fall out the vendors dropped the keys at our office.(typical involve the agent when the shit hits the fan)
We gave out the keys on completion day to a fuming Mrs F who was now accusing us of over charging HER!
We then encountered a barrage of calls once she arrived at the house because the vendors had removed all the light bulbs, extracted every ml of oil from the tank, didn't leave the garage key and to top it off left a rather nasty 'present' in the gas meter box.
The end result was that we got our fee.
The moral of the story is karma is a bitch and don't do dodgy deals!
