Estate Agents and Buyer lying about not being in a chain.

[HS1979]

I need some advice.
In April we sold our house to a First time buyer who told us they were renting, had a mortgage in place and were "ready to go". We accepted a very low offer as we had already found a house to move into and the sellers were keen to proceed. More than 2 months later and a move date put in place by Solicitors, we have found out that our buyer was not renting but planning to sell her house back to the Housing Association once she had found another property (ours, in this case). We have found this out less than 2 weeks before were due to move and her sale has still not been completed. None of the solicitors in the upward chain were aware she had a property to sell, but the Estate Agents did.
We explicitly told our Estate Agent that we wanted a First time buyer or cash buyer so we could proceed quickly and had already had a number of issues with them regarding the way our house had been marketed and poor communication. We were tied into a 90 day contract, so had to stick with them.
We had other offers at asking price, but these potential buyers were also in a chain, so on the advice of the Estate Agents we refused them. It was the final week of our contract that we got this offer off a "first time buyer".
We have complained (only over the phone, so far) to the Estate Agents and they have told us "These things happen, everyone lies"
We are unhappy with the way we have been treated from Day 1. Is there anything we can legally do? Do we still have to pay them in full? I believe we have lost a lot of money over this, as well as the upset of the forwarding chain when everyone is packed up and ready to move.
Has this happened to anyone else? We are at a loss of what to do.

We had already recieved the contracts from our solicitors, for our sale and purchase (and signed and returned them) when we got the news!

Thanks

[wales01man]

Re: Estate Agents and Buyer lying about not being in a chain.

IS the agent a member of a trade body complain to them after making a formal complaint to the agent, is your request for a type of buyer in writing if not you may have a problem trying for some discount on fees or compensation

[stevemLS]

Re: Estate Agents and Buyer lying about not being in a chain.

As far as I know you could tell the agent you were the Queen of Sheeba who then passes on that information, in good faith, and there would be no come back against the agent when it was eventually discovered you were in fact the King of Poland :tinysmile_twink_t2:

So, to make any complaint, you would have to show that the agent knew or ought to have known that the buyer was not in fact a FTB as well as evidencing your instructions as suggested by wales01man

[HS1979]

Re: Estate Agents and Buyer lying about not being in a chain.

Thanks for the replies so soon. The Estate Agent is a member of a trade body as far as I can tell via google searching and we are going to write a formal complaint, but we dont know whether to wait until the sale finally goes through or do it now (?) in case they cause more problems for us.
They did know that the Buyer had a house to sell as it says so in her records, we have since found out. The buyer actually told us to our face that she was renting. We even paid for a detailed survey to be done on our house after her basic one flagged a small issue and she refused to get it done for her mortgage.
We didn't put our FTB/ end the chain instructions in writing unfortunately, but did tell every member of staff we spoke to who all said they'd note it in our file (along with the numerous other thing they said they'd do, but that's another story!)
Needless to say once we get this done with, we wont be recommending them to anyone. We'll write a formal complaint and wait it out, I suppose. Cheers