A conveyancer has accused an unnamed agent of pressuring a buyer into signing a reservation agreement.
A Conveyancing Task Force (CTF) statement given to Estate Agent Today says: ”In one recent case, a buyer, immediately after his offer was accepted by the agent, was pressured to sign a reservation agreement presented only as a glossy web page.
“When the real document finally surfaced, it contained:
▪ A £5,000 “commitment” buried in footnotes
▪ A clause awarding 50% of any penalty to the estate agent
▪ Elevated defect thresholds, making withdrawal by the buyer harder
▪ A payment structure where the buyer pays upfront and the seller pays nothing until the exchange of contracts
▪ An arrangement ensuring the agent profits whether the sale completes or collapses
“On this occasion, the buyer walked away. Otherwise, it would be a case of heads the agent wins, tails the buyer loses, and the legal practitioner is left to pick up the pieces.”
The CTF declined to name the agent when Estate Agent Today requested clarification.
The claim is made in a statement which demonstrates what appears to be a growing split in the conveyancing sector over the government house buying reforms.
Last week the government announced wide-ranging measures including upfront information packs, extensive reliance on digitisation, and binding agreements introduced at an earlier stage in the transaction process.
This was in the context of transaction times soaring and fall-throughs plaguing up to a third of deals under the current private treaty system.
The Council of Licensed Conveyancers threw its weight behind the proposals and was quoted by the government in its launch statement.
The council issued a supportive statement saying: “The CLC has a long history of championing innovation and modernisation in the legal services market, particularly where it improves the consumer experience, and we stand ready to play our part, working with Licensed Conveyancers to deliver these changes.”
However, now The Conveyancing Task Force has issued an angrily-worded statement criticising binding agreements.
It quotes another case where it says a party to a binding agreement was deemed to have “withdrawn unreasonably” resulting in damages running into the tens of thousands.
The CTF says: “This is what happens when binding commitments are imposed on the vulnerable before the legal and factual landscape is understood.”
