For one reason or another, I find myself still renewing my REIV membership every year. One benefit to that is getting the EA magazine sent out to me every couple of months, which has a lot of rubbish, a lot of ads, and the odd article of interest.
One such article in this edition is headed, as above, "Failure to check emails costs $10k".
My first thought was to wonder how many agents were about to go bankrupt...
Anyway, summation of the article is that an agency with a property due to auction shortly, managed to sell it prior. Vendor was, quoting VCAT, "delighted" with the sale price and all was good.
Until, the vendor's neighbour contacts them, and reveals that they had their buyer's advocate ring the agent (prior to sale) and ask that the property not be sold before auction without giving them a chance to make an offer as well. The advocate then emailed the agent on the same day with an expression of interest and confirming the request.
The agent didn't check his emails again until after the sale was arranged to someone else, and didn't contact the advocate again during that time.
The neighbour now claims that he would have paid $40,000 more for the property than the eventual purchaser did. The vendor wasn't so delighted anymore and subsequently issued legal proceedings. VCAT found that the agent was in breach of his duty of care to obtain the best possible price for the vendor, because he didn't check his email regularly enough and didn't follow up the potential offer from the advocate.
So VCAT, in all their wisdom, issued a compensation order of $10,000 from the agency to the vendor.
One such article in this edition is headed, as above, "Failure to check emails costs $10k".
My first thought was to wonder how many agents were about to go bankrupt...
Anyway, summation of the article is that an agency with a property due to auction shortly, managed to sell it prior. Vendor was, quoting VCAT, "delighted" with the sale price and all was good.
Until, the vendor's neighbour contacts them, and reveals that they had their buyer's advocate ring the agent (prior to sale) and ask that the property not be sold before auction without giving them a chance to make an offer as well. The advocate then emailed the agent on the same day with an expression of interest and confirming the request.
The agent didn't check his emails again until after the sale was arranged to someone else, and didn't contact the advocate again during that time.
The neighbour now claims that he would have paid $40,000 more for the property than the eventual purchaser did. The vendor wasn't so delighted anymore and subsequently issued legal proceedings. VCAT found that the agent was in breach of his duty of care to obtain the best possible price for the vendor, because he didn't check his email regularly enough and didn't follow up the potential offer from the advocate.
So VCAT, in all their wisdom, issued a compensation order of $10,000 from the agency to the vendor.