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There was a recent post about how a seller is obliged to sell their house as long as a purchaser comes up with the asking price.

I can't think that this is correct but, this is France, and I am on foreign ground, literally.

So, is that correct or not?  Do you not reserve the right to say, no, I don't want to sell after all, so please keep your money and go away?

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Before the compromis.  I suppose I am thinking of a situation whereby the seller is unable to find another house which they want to buy.

You know how it is, no sooner had you let your house go when you realise it's not such a bad house after all and you do not consider the houses you have seen to be as good value as the one you are selling![8-)]

 

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I have just replied to a post on another forum, where the situation is reversed and a willing buyer is faced with a now-reluctant seller (talking about capital gains problems) who has countersigned the compromis de vente. The sale could be forced through and/or compensation demanded and paid.

There are a number of issues here. If as owner you mandate an agent to find a buyer for your property, then you have entered into a binding contract, and if the agent finds a willing buyer (offering the full price) then you are obliged to pay the agent's commission, whether a sale results or not - the buyer may back away and the mandate runs its course, normally three months renewable. But mandates have a long life (normally two years) and if a client introduced by the agency later returns and the owner agrees to sell to him/her, agency commission will still be payable. In either scenario some agencies may not bother to pursue and write you off as a nuisance, but they may be faced with an unhappy client pressing them to insist on the sale. And in these hard times, buyers are valuable and need looking after.

From the buyer's point of view, he/she can just walk away and look elsewhere, but this still leaves the relucant seller with the problem of What if the agency presents another buyer? (within or after the initial three month period of the mandate - which you might have overlooked to cancel....)

In one of the French TV programmes dealing with 'house doctoring', there are often cases of sellers getting cold feet at the last minute. When they see 'their' house transformed for sale by the interior designer team their reaction often is 'But it's not my house anymore!' Precisely. That's the whole point. And it certainly won't be once it's sold and the new owner wreaks his own transformation.

So my advice is to think hard if you really want to sell and then adjust psychologically to the fact that your former home will soon not be yours anymore. It's no use going back and complaining that the new owners have changed the colour of the front door or uprooted 'your' prize rose bush.

Best of luck whatever your decide but do proceed with caution,

P-D de Rouffignac www.francemediterraneanproperty.com

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But when the mandate runs out of time, then the seller can refuse to sell to a new buyer? This happened to us, ie the immo didn't realise that the mandate had run out. We had resigned ourselves to staying put, and starting to make more plans for the house.

Then the immo brought along came some people who were really keen. We put various obstacles in the the way but they remained , we signed a new mandate, and eventually the sale went through. 

 In that situation could we have gone for a private sale and avoided immo fees? But that sounds unethical. The immo had been very helpful to both sides.

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Thank you for the comprehensive answer, P-D.  You have given me precisely the sort of information I need.

I do think I might be better off finding a place I really like first, if only because I already live in a very nice house that would tick a lot of boxes for a lot of people.

The reasons I want to move are personal rather than anything to do with the house.

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I beg your pardon, Patf.  I didn't see your post as I was responding to P-D's

For the record, my question had nothing to do with avoiding anyone being done out of fees.  Even Estate Agents have to earn a living [:)] and fair's fair.  I would not consider not paying fees that are due, whether buying or selling.

I was only nervous about having to sell because I had a contract with an agent and then being unable to find a house as nice as my own which I could afford.

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[quote user="P-D de Rouffignac"]

If as owner you mandate an agent to find a buyer for your property, then you have entered into a binding contract, and if the agent finds a willing buyer (offering the full price) then you are obliged to pay the agent's commission, whether a sale results or not

 [/quote]

P-D

Please define willing buyer for me (particularly in view of the 7 day get out clause after signing the compromis).

Thank you

John

 

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Yes, Woody, I do like my house but I don't want to stay in it!  This is because I would like to be in another type of area.  My house is at the edge of a village and on a busyish road.

And, thank goodness, I have no debts to pay!

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This happened to a neighbour of ours (second home owner) who came round to tell us that he had just bumped into the agent he had bought from several years earlier and had mentioned that he may be thinking of selling.  The agent whisked him into the office and signed him up there and then, saying he had several protential purchasers.  We thought that the price the agent had set the house at was too low and our neighbour (it now being Sunday) decided to phone the agent when he got back to the UK on Monday night.  By the time he had done that the agent said he had someone who was going to pay full asking price.  Our neighbour looked into getting out of the deal but the only way was by paying the agent's fees.  Basically this would have been almost the difference between the sale price and the increased price he wanted to ask, so he went ahead.  But it just shows that you have to be really careful that you know the differences in laws between countries.
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Thanks for posting that, oscar.  So, it must be quite hard to pitch a price that will enable you to sell but not so low that, if you couldn't get another house at as good a price, you are stuffed!

Not a nice thought........

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Replying to Iceni's question about a "willing buyer" - in this context I was referring to someone ready, willing and able to buy the property in question. This assumes they have not taken advantage of the 7-day cooling-off period and have the capacity to pay.

The post by Oscar demonstrates the inadvisability of signing a mandate with an agent unless you seriously intend to sell.

An owner once said to me 'I just wanted to see if there were any potential buyers out there......'  Doh!

P-D de Rouffignac www.francemediterraneanproperty.com

 

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This is why there is always a negotiation element and why the price stated by the agencies is not the price that people pay.  It is so sellers can get out if something goes wrong and they so desire.  We considered a house on the market at 349 000, it went for 310 000, there is just such scope for negotiation. You look at the prices and remove 15%, or else it is a bad deal. 

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  • 7 months later...

I came across this post while trying to find out some more info about 'compromis de vente' and whether there were any circumstances other than those set out in clause at point of signing (ie 7 day cool off, house loan offer etc) where the sale could fail without the deposit being paid, but that is another story.

In my case, I actually ended up offering the full asking price, which I thought committed the vendor to sell. However, a couple of things of note from our sale were that firstly, the vendor is only committed as far as the agent's mandate is concerned. Additionally I understand that if the vendor refuses to sell and refuses to pay the agents fee, then the court case can take a couple of years to take place and can damage an agents reputation for for forcing 'a poor local farmer' in to a sale to a foreigner. Also, this idea that the sale then proceeds at the offer price just doesnt really work either. Admittedly we had particularly difficult vendors, but they told us that the offer price only worked if completion was in 9 months and we bought their kitchen for EUR 25,000! If we wanted it any earlier then we would need to find an extra EUR 25,000 on top of that for 'other furniture'. They claimed the kitchen was not fixed? We eventually settled once the agent had cut his fees in half (his choice, we told him to enforce the mandate) and come to a compromise that left us pay more than the asking price.

So as a buyer it seems that what appears at first to be a great framework for buying a house is actually not as clear cut as it seems. IE When a vendor wants to be difficult, it will be difficult regardless of it being in France.

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Kitchens are usually not included in the sale, in the past and indeed now a new house only includes a basic sink and unit, until the relatively recent "fitted kitchens" all appliances and units were stand alone and would be taken by the vendor.

I would have let them take their €25K kitchen, although there do seem to be plenty of pigeons that pay that much to have one fitted it does not make it worth that to the buyer.

There was an article a few years back in the Connexion newspaper showing a disgruntled UK ex-pat standing in front of his (in his words unsatisfactory) fitted kitchen that he had paid €40k for up front, it ressembled a brico depot one although not as well put together as their display ones (I would not have thought that was possible!), not a patch even on a B&Q one.

There is one born every minute.

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