Estate Agents should carry health warning

Labour Candidate for Dublin South, Aidan Culhane, has called on new house and apartment buyers to be wary of the promises of estate agents.

“Increasingly developers are writing estate agents out of the picture inserting clauses into contracts exempting themselves from being bound by any representations made by their agents.

I would suggest that young house buyers would do well to put their questions and queries directly to developers at an early stage so that they know what they are getting. The material produced by estate agents is not legally binding and comes with more health warnings than your average packet of cigarettes. Ultimately, it is far too simple and it happens for too often, that estate agents offer meaningless guarantees about issues raised by clients – like the nature of appliances being provided - that they are not in a position to deliver on.

Recently the new IAVI President, John Dawson, complained that estate agents bound by law to do the bidding of their clients and therefore weren’t in a position to address some of the problems in their industry, like gazumping, that are affecting purchasers. However, it seems the problem is more fundamental.

Ultimately, because the estate agents acts as a buffer between the retailer and the buyer, but not as the developer’s legal agent, this means that if any aspect of a property is misrepresented, there is nobody who can be held to account for it.

So my advice to people interested in new property in particular is to ignore the estate agent and go straight to the developer with your queries and concerns. The middle man is powerless so cut him out.”