Purchaser paying sellers fees

keane16

I will try and keep it brief.

Myself and wife went to look at a house for sale a couple of weeks ago. The EA told us the current owner is selling the property but it is being forced by the bank. The bank will make the decision to accept offers and the EA have set a fee so it is not in his interest to look for a higher price just get the sale. This all sounded ok to me.

We were interested in the house so went to view it again over the weekend, the EA informs us that the current owner has no money at all and the bank are taking 100% of the sale leaving solicitor fees, EA fees and a few other fees that will cost X amount and this will need to be paid by the purchaser.

Has anyone experienced or heard of this before.

P. Breathnach

Sounds dodgy to me. I suspect that the "current owner" is trying to arrange getting a few bob into his own pocket.

L1011

Bank should be covering them, sounds to me as if the seller wants to pocket a bit - the number of threads where there's obvious scams by sellers in these cases on here is not small.

djimi

Why would the purchaser be expected to cover the sellers costs? Walk away or tell this clown to cop on; their costs are their own business. Let them build them into the selling price if they wish, but its not your problem what the bank does with that money.

Bigcheeze

P. Breathnach wrote: »

Sounds dodgy to me. I suspect that the "current owner" is trying to arrange getting a few bob into his own pocket.

This.

It'll play out something like 100k for the house, 5k directly to seller to cover costs.

Solicitor and EA always make sure they are paid on closing out of the proceeds but the buyer doesn't see this side of the transaction.

martinn123

EA is spinning a tale.

If the Bank is forcing the sale, they will accept a reasonable offer, from which they will have to deduct, EA Fees, Solicitor, any Tax o/s i.e Household Tax, etc, and then they get to pay the remainder off the mortgage.

As a purchaser you have no responsibility to pay any fees other than your own Solicitor, any Stamp Duty etc.

make an offer, and then see a Solicitor.

keane16

Thanks for all the replies.

I was thinking along the same lines as the bank should pay them or sort something out with the current owner, it's nothing to do with us.

jmayo

keane16 wrote: »

I will try and keep it brief.

Myself and wife went to look at a house for sale a couple of weeks ago. The EA told us the current owner is selling the property but it is being forced by the bank. The bank will make the decision to accept offers and the EA have set a fee so it is not in his interest to look for a higher price just get the sale. This all sounded ok to me.

We were interested in the house so went to view it again over the weekend, the EA informs us that the current owner has no money at all and the bank are taking 100% of the sale leaving solicitor fees, EA fees and a few other fees that will cost X amount and this will need to be paid by the purchaser.

Has anyone experienced or heard of this before.

You could politely tell him that is grand, but you only pay your own costs and not anyone elses.
The sellers, be they bank or an individual, deduct their costs from the selling price, not from an on top amount.

Alternatively of course you could tell them that you couldn't give two fooks whether the current or previous owner has money or not.
That is their tough luck not yours.

To me it looks like he is basically looking for an under the counter amount that they can pocket without it going anywhere near the bank.
BTW that would possibly be one of those banks that we the taxpayers own and thus are on the hook for this sellers/defaulters mortgage.

It reminds me of the days when property purchases in Eastern Europe (or Spain before that) were offically stated amounts were lower than the real life amount so that the VAT owed was lower.
All of course for the buyers benefit. :rolleyes:

ted1

He is having a laugh a colleague just purchased a place that was on negative equity. He got a letter from the bank seating that they realise any hold on the property, the sale price and the amount from the sake that is going towards closing off and hold they have. The balance covers outstanding property taxes, outstanding management fees, estate agent fees etc.

No way would the bank let the sale go with these fees outstanding. Your solicitor or bank certainly wont

Victor

How about this?

Bid for property €XX,000
Bid for costs €1

:pac:

---

More seriously, that is just a licence for the vendors side to rack up the costs, including spending hundreds of hours drafting up a contract that you won't like and will cost you more as your solicitor will have to go through it.

Neither you nor the bank really care what the money is called, you have to hand over an amount of money and the bank needs to receive that money, having accounted for their own costs. The only people that care about the breakdown of the money are the vendor, the estate agent and the vendor's solicitor.

fasttalkerchat

Just a guess. They want to take 10k costs from a 100k sale. The bank would never allow it so they need you to pay them in a separate transaction.

johnnyskeleton

keane16 wrote: »

I will try and keep it brief.

Myself and wife went to look at a house for sale a couple of weeks ago. The EA told us the current owner is selling the property but it is being forced by the bank. The bank will make the decision to accept offers and the EA have set a fee so it is not in his interest to look for a higher price just get the sale. This all sounded ok to me.

We were interested in the house so went to view it again over the weekend, the EA informs us that the current owner has no money at all and the bank are taking 100% of the sale leaving solicitor fees, EA fees and a few other fees that will cost X amount and this will need to be paid by the purchaser.

Has anyone experienced or heard of this before.

Lets say the house price as agreed is €100,000 and the sellers legal fees are €1k.

You have offered €100k and this is acceptable. But the EA says, hold on, we want you to pay the seller's legal fees too because the bank want 100% of the purchase price.

You say fine, I'll reduce my bid to €99,000 and will pay €1,000 to the seller for his legal fees, totalling €100,000.

martinn123

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Lets say the house price as agreed is €100,000 and the sellers legal fees are €1k.

You have offered €100k and this is acceptable. But the EA says, hold on, we want you to pay the seller's legal fees too because the bank want 100% of the purchase price.

You say fine, I'll reduce my bid to €99,000 and will pay €1,000 to the seller for his legal fees, totalling €100,000.

A dangerous road to go down.

You will find the EA want's 2%, and the Solr 1% plus VAT that's 3690.00
Then you discover the Property Tax was'nt paid,
Oh bye the way we need 3 years Management Fees, and of course the Seller wants 5K for the Carpets, Curtains, and fitted kitchen, ( paid in cash under the counter ).

Your solicitor should not let you near any deal with these pitfalls, nor will your Lender.

It's a scam.