Hi.

We are currently selling our house in Portugal. We have it advertised with two estate Agents.

Both agents have taken the same clients to view the property.

It would appear that the clients decided to go to the 2nd agent for some reason un beknown to us.

Now the fun has started. Agent No1 are saying that as they did the initial introduction to the property that we are liable for commission to both them and agent No 2 if the sale goes through.

We feel entirely helpless in the situation as we are only the innocent sellers.

Our contracts with both agents appear to be slightly different in as much that agent No1 has a clause "if the agent or his representative introduces directly or indirectly a buyer for the property, IRRESPECTIVE OF THE TERMS OF THIS CONTRACT!!!!!! then we the sellers agree to pay them commission.

This contract, has only been signed by my wife and so wonder that if it is binding (which seems totally unfair) have I a way out as a person who didnt sign it.
We obviously dont want to enter into expensive litigation over something out of our control and wonder if anyone out there has any views on this subject which is causing us some considerable worry.

sneaky little clause that one.

well if you can get the buyer to come through the first agent then it would only cost that one commission, and you get to sell the house. or tell the agents to sort it out between themselves or you will cancel the contract and sell privately to the buyer, no commision.
also all contracts have to be registered, most agents dont do this, so if you really want a get out, then you could get your solicitor to look into it, if the contracts not filled out correctly with the house owners names and registered etc then maybe you can cancel with them easilly

Get legal advice. My guess would be that the agent which introduced the client initially would get the commission, whereas the second agency should have done their homework and established whether the client had already viewed that property before.

If the client does not want to work with the first agency because he considers them to be unprofessional I'm not sure what happens because effectively they did their job and brought you a buyer.

The situation you described sometimes happens when the buyer tries to get a discount off the sales price. Imagine agency a) told the buyer that the property was worth what you were asking for it, whereas agent b) told them they should haggle. Agency b) then offers the client some of their commission in order to close the sale.

Unless you know what exactly happened, you can't really make a decision.

Good luck though, but find out through your lawyer, and pref. as soon as possible, just in case you are liable to pay the commission twice.

In Spain, if an agency can prove beyond doubt that they were involved in the brokering of the house and if they have a signed contract with the seller to sell the house, they will eventually get their commission by taking the seller to court. However I'm not sure the same applies in Portugal and what happens with double situations like the one you mentioned.

__________________
Yes, I work for a Real Estate company doing market research and analysis but I'm not involved in sales.

Have a nice day

Thank you for your replies and advice. We will be doing all we can to mediate between the agencies as we feel this is the most sensible and indeed the moral way forward.

it is such a shame that we have put into this position and are very disappointed.

Once again many thanks.

Hi there,

first of all you must be sure that you didn`t give to one (or both - by error) of the agents the exclusivity rights.
If you gave the exclusivity to one of them, than you will have to pay the one who has exclusivity, as he is the only agent who has the right to promote your property...independent of the fact through which agent the buyer desires to buy.

If none of them has the exclusivity, in this case the buyer has the right to choose with whom he wants to buy the property and this will be the agent that you will have to pay.
There is a type of "law" which says: "The clients are always the kings..."
In this case the client desires to purchase your property through the second agent...so that is what will happen and that is the agent who will receive the commission.

We are real estate agents based in the Silver Coast, Eastern Algarve and Central Algarve, so I know what I am speaking about.

Good luck
Antonio

You are quite right . the point is to know if there is exclusivity or not.

best regards
luis

Many thanks to villasluz and l.a.a.s.

Our contracts do not give either agent exclusivity.

So it would seem that our buyers are entitled to use whatever agent they choose.(which does appear to make sense to us)

Our only concern is the clause I mentioned in my first post. I am of the opinion that we will pay the agent that completes the sale and then leave it to the agents to argue the toss with regards to the fees.

Antonio,

Assuming:
I have a signed and valid sales agreement with the vendor
I have a signed viewing report by the buyer stating that I was the first agent to show him that property

I will get paid my commission, even if he goes off the next day and decides to buy it through you. My sales contract is with the vendor not the buyer and it is for introducing a client who will buy the property. "Buyer" is described later on in the contract as a person, friends, family and business owned by the person signing the viewing report. So unless the agency doesn't care, or have a bad contract, they can go to court and get paid.

__________________
Yes, I work for a Real Estate company doing market research and analysis but I'm not involved in sales.

Have a nice day

Read your contract carefully and I still urge you to get legal advice if in doubt. I've worked in real estate in Spain for a while and have seen every type of situation you can think of.

Under the perception of saving some €, buyers do things you wouldn't believe, from handing scribbled pieces of paper with their phone number on to the vendor during a viewing, going back to the house 5 minutes after and trying to haggle with the vendor, to having a friend pose as an agent in order to avoid the sales commission.

If, however, the agent has a properly written sales agreement which is valid and in date (a good contract will also be valid for X amount of months after the expiry date to avoid buyers just waiting two or three months for the contract to expire), they can make you pay them.

On several occasions, the lawyer of the company I was working with had to show up at the notary, but we always got paid. Which is only fair seeing as we always registered the client first. If we hadn't introduced the client and another agent sold it that's one thing. But spending money and time on advertising a property to have the buyer and seller "scam" the agency out of their money is another. (Assuming the vendor and buyer are in cahoots and splitting the commission, which I've seen done before too).

In your case, I'd make sure you aren't dealing with a company which knows what they are doing before you pay anyone. If you were dealing with my old company (which I'm pretty sure you aren't because they only recently opened in Portugal and are still pretty small) then you would end up paying twice.

__________________
Yes, I work for a Real Estate company doing market research and analysis but I'm not involved in sales.

Have a nice day

Just noticed this. Are you both on the property title deeds as owners? If you are both on the title deeds as owners or if you are and your wife isn't (ideally) you have a better chance of not having to pay the commission as the contract would be void.

It all depends on how good their contracts are and how good their lawyers are and how far they are willing to take it to get paid. Very few agencies actually follow it up (ours was one of the only ones that did) because not that many are confident enough in their own paperwork. Not all agencies get the client to sign a sheet of paper stating that he was seeing the property for the first time with the company, etc.

__________________
Yes, I work for a Real Estate company doing market research and analysis but I'm not involved in sales.

Have a nice day