An estate agent cannot demand payment of the commission if he looks after prospective buyers who purchase the property at a later date at a lower price from another estate agent. This was decided by the Darmstadt Regional Court (LG Darmstadt; 29 O 326/19). In this case, an owner had entrusted a real estate agent with the sale of his property by contract until January 31, 2019. In this context, a viewing appointment was also held with prospective buyers.
However, at around 600,000 euros, the property was apparently too expensive for the prospective buyers. Although the estate agent sought talks with the sellers, they still wanted around 600,000 euros for their property. The estate agent informed the prospective buyers of this. Around two weeks later, they wrote to the estate agent stating that they did not wish to view any more properties. However, they were well aware that someone could beat them to the property purchase. They therefore withdrew their intention to buy.
Before his contract expired, the estate agent sent the sellers a list of several prospective buyers, which included the names of the aforementioned prospective buyers. However, from February 2019, the sellers commissioned a different estate agent. It later transpired that the property had been sold to the aforementioned prospective buyers via the new estate agent for EUR 535,000. The first estate agent then went to court and demanded the commission, around 5.95% of the purchase price, from the prospective buyers. Wrongly, as the Darmstadt Regional Court found. One of the reasons for this was that the prospective buyers or buyers had to pay a significantly lower purchase price to the second estate agent.
Source: rv.hessenrecht.hessen.de
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