I don’t know about you, but most of the estate agents I’ve seen looked intimidatingly authoritative. As a direct consequence of this appearance, when they speak – you listen, when they demand – you sign, when they say “jump”, you ask “how high?”.
But there are certain things even Estate Agents can’t get away with 
Tenants
They can’t raise your bond, even though they have raised the rent. If your rent has been increased and you’re paying more than $350 per week, it doesn’t mean that your bond will be “topped up” and you won’t have to pay an additional bond. If they try to pull that on you, contact Consumer Affairs of Victoria (or your respective organization in another state).
Landlords
They can’t neglect checking references or not verify the information on tenant’s applications. They also can’t choose a tenant without your approval. If they do, this is a breach of property management agreement you’ve signed.
If they don’t have an “authority to manage” – a signed document which makes them your appointed Property Managers – they can’t claim or charge you any commissions or expenses.
Home buyers
If you’ve made an offer on a house, they can’t call you and say “Congratulations, the house is yours!”, and the next day call you with “Sorry, the vendors changed their minds the last moment”. It is illegal for agent to mislead you regarding the status of your offer and if you incur expenses because of such incident, you have a case against them.
One example of such misleading was John (not his real name). He submitted an offer on a house, subject to financing, and was notified by the estate agent that his offer was accepted. John was excited and contacted his lender immediately to arrange for property valuation – a standard procedure. What he didn’t know was that on the same day 2 offers were submitted to the vendor, his and another person’s, and in the end the vendor signed the other purchaser’s offer. John filed a complaint and the agent, with his tail between the legs, refunded the valuation fee John had to pay.
Do you have a story of your own to share about what estate agents can and can not do?
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for this article, Chris.
Most people don’t know thier rights and they have to trust that they find one of the minority, being an agent that has skills enough to represent their seller, but still treat buyers in a fair, honest and professional manner.
Great article and look forward to exploring your blog more.
Glenn Twiddle
Real Estate Training Brisbane
They seem to be able to get away with pretty serious underquoting!
We were pretty serious about a property for sale in Glen Iris (VIC) with one of the largest estate agents in the area. On domain it didnt have a price, but came up when adjusting the price range to 700K – 700K.
When inspecting the property, they said they “had interest” in the 700 to 750K range.
On auction day the auction was passed in to us, then during the negotitaions the agent bullied us saying the seller actually originally wanted 850K, and did we expect to get it for less than 800.
We didnt offer this much and the property was eventually sold to someone else a few weeks later.
I guess with the new rules you talk about (from Jan 2010) we may have at least got back our property inspection costs.. but even this seems unlikely as I guess the agent could get away with saying they hadn’t provided any price.
I hope that we’ll see some improvement from 2010, not only because the agents will be “restrained” by law, but also because the vendors will become liable for agent’s actions. This will make the people think twice before going along with whatever game the agent had in mind. It will be just like with tax returns – the accountant fills the forms, but the person who hired him is liable for any mistakes in these forms.
Once, the agent accused us wrongly for not paying our rent, but we could prove from our bank record that rents have been paid regularly on time. The agent did not apologize for her mistake even when proven wrong.
A month ago, we requested for rental contract extension another year through the agent (after staying for a year in current property). However, the agent simply ignored our request till 2 weeks ago (after much calling), and told us that the tenant can only go on a month by month periodic rental.
How do we know if the agent has taken thing personally instead of being objective about our rental contract renewal request? I suspect that the agent did not convey our request to the landlord, and just making things difficult for us. What can we do as tenant?
Hi Beth,
If you have your landlord’s postal address you could send a letter via post and convey your request to renew the contract, along with your concern that the agent may not be doing their job properly.