Estate agency fee T&Cs question

My folks have finally decided/realised that it’s time to move into a retirement place. They’ve had their house on the market for two weeks without a sniff, but they’ve now seen a retirement flat they like, and the developer will (probably) buy their house off them. I appreciate that they won’t get the full market value, but it could make the whole process considerably simpler.

Now, the question is, if we sell to the developer, is the estate agent entitled to their fee? I think not, as no introduction has been made by the agent, the sale is entirely direct between my parents and the developer. I’ve attached the appropriate bits from the marketing agreement below:

Aren’t you stuck with the estate agent as sole agent for 14 weeks?

Have they signed a contract?

I hate estate agents & the UK system.

Aren’t you stuck with the estate agent as sole agent for 14 weeks?

Have they signed a contact?

They have signed a contract, terms as in the pics, but my reading of it is if a sale is made that is nothing to do with the agent, they don’t get a fee.

The key bit is,  I think “if the introduction is effected by our promotion of the property“. In this case, using their definition of introduction, it won’t have been.

.

Estate agents are mostly not very ethical and will fight tooth and nail for their fee.

Whose conveyancer are you going to use?

Purchaser introduced by any other agent or person seems like it would include you or your parents but probably unreasonably so.  Talk to the agents, it won’t be the first time for them and I doubt they want to get into legal wrangles over a single sale

Purchaser introduced by any other agent or person seems like it would include you or your parents

Yeah, this was my initial thought, but then I read their definition of ‘introduction/introduced’, which is effectively if the purchaser became aware of the property via the agent’s marketing, which in this case they have not.

But yeah, obviously needs a conversation with the agent.

Can’t you just wait out the exclusivity period and then remove the house from the market, then px?

Our last house was on the market for a few weeks with an EA, then we agreed a PX and sold to the developer of our current house.

The EA didn’t expect anything from us when we told them what we were doing, it must be a pretty common situation. The developer then left it on the market with the same agent once they took ownership.

We bought a house in a complex trio arrangement with trade-in from developer and a sale back to us.

The developer phoned the EA, told them what was happening and that the vendor has approached the developer, and so the EA could go whistle.