There is no interest earned in the agents trust account. When we brought this place we only paid a $20k deposit. If we were to pay 10% it would have been well over $65k and the settlement wasn't for 8 weeks. The agent said because it was such a high price 10% wasn't necessary. We had also sold our 2 properties with the same agent aswell so she knew we were good for it.
Glenn
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23 acres, a cat(olive), Maddison the chocolate lab, 2 ewes, Mumma the cow, 4 steers, 10 chooks and lots of hares.
There is no interest earned in the agents trust account. When we brought this place we only paid a $20k deposit. If we were to pay 10% it would have been well over $65k and the settlement wasn't for 8 weeks. The agent said because it was such a high price 10% wasn't necessary. We had also sold our 2 properties with the same agent aswell so she knew we were good for it.
That is very generous of the Agent SG to say so, considering the Vendors have engaged her to act on their behalf and not yours, as the purchaser.... I do hope she consulted the Vendors first.[:0]
Take note your estate agent will only be interested in you paying/receiving a deposit which covers their commission, which they become entitled to once they have achieved an unconditional contract - i.e. they have completed their obligations in that legally the property has sold, regardless of funds being settled. You then through you solicitor have to insure the funds are processed in accordance with the settlement agreement. As of right should someone default on an unconditional agreement your recourse is to sue for performance, if this is unsuccessful the fallback is then to sue for damages - usually you are required to offer the property for auction or tender and the difference between the realised price and the previous defaulted contract price becomes your damages plus possible costs assuming the defaulting purchaser can fund such damages and you are prepared to fund the legal costs of recovering same.
If selling by tender the deposit cheque is normally attached to the tender - take care to make sure the deposit is big enough ie specify with your agent how big a deposit you require before it goes to tender eg 5% or 10%. Dont get caught the way we did.
In our case we assumed (wrongly) that the standard deposit was 10% and on the day the tenders were opened we didnt notice till to late that the deposit had been a bit less than it should have been - this left us short of the deposit for our new place, in particular as we forgot that the agent would take gst on top of her commission. We ended up needing a bit of extra finance for a few days as the people we were buying off wanted the full 10% deposit.
The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable
living from a small piece of land. ~ Abraham Lincoln ~
