Quote:
Originally Posted by Dawnpatrol
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.
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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.