We have recently bought a property and paid a 10% deposit upon agreement being unconditional but vendor was unable to settle even after we postponed the settlement date and we also went further to serve a 12 working day vendor settlement notice (as per the S&P).
Eventually we decided to cancel the agreement but was only able to retrieve 40% of the deposit back from vendor's solicitors after the vendor's solicitors had deducted his legal fees from the deposit that was in his trust account. The remaining deposit had already been taken by the real estate agent as commission.
Does anyone know how we should proceed in recovering the remaining deposit (i.e. agent's commission)? Our solicitors have already sent the real estate agency a letter 2 weeks ago requesting for the refund of the deposit since it was the vendor defaulting on the agreement and their commission should have been paid by the vendor and not the purchasers. But we have not heard back from the agency.
As we are trying to keep our legal costs at a minimum, and the amount we are trying to claim is slightly below 15k, we are thinking of bringing this to disputes tribunal to recover the deposit from the agency and the legal fees incurred from the vendor. Has anyone experienced anything similar and can you advise if there's other options for us from here?
Also, is there anyway we can prevent a situation like this from recurring again?
Eventually we decided to cancel the agreement but was only able to retrieve 40% of the deposit back from vendor's solicitors after the vendor's solicitors had deducted his legal fees from the deposit that was in his trust account. The remaining deposit had already been taken by the real estate agent as commission.
Does anyone know how we should proceed in recovering the remaining deposit (i.e. agent's commission)? Our solicitors have already sent the real estate agency a letter 2 weeks ago requesting for the refund of the deposit since it was the vendor defaulting on the agreement and their commission should have been paid by the vendor and not the purchasers. But we have not heard back from the agency.
As we are trying to keep our legal costs at a minimum, and the amount we are trying to claim is slightly below 15k, we are thinking of bringing this to disputes tribunal to recover the deposit from the agency and the legal fees incurred from the vendor. Has anyone experienced anything similar and can you advise if there's other options for us from here?
Also, is there anyway we can prevent a situation like this from recurring again?
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