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Important Information
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Introduction
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This page contains important information that tells you
about legislation governing estate agents, and about how Halifax Estate
Agencies Limited conducts its business.
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Any action or request for additional information conducted
on this site does not constitute an agreement between Halifax Estate Agencies
Limited and the user. If a site user wishes to sell or buy a home through us, any terms and conditions will be fully
disclosed at that time.
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The Property Misdescriptions Act 1991
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The Property Misdescriptions Act is a major part of
legislation affecting estate agency, which gives you added protection.
The aim of the act is to ensure that everything said or written by an estate agent about a property is accurate, and
not misleading.
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The act is enforced by the Trading Standards Authority, and
in Northern Ireland by the Department of Economic Development.
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Halifax Estate Agencies Limited fully supports the principles
of this legislation and takes great care to produce accurate and realistic
property details.
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The Ombudsman for Estate Agents
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Halifax Estate Agencies Limited is a member of the Ombudsman for Estate Agents scheme.
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Money Laundering Regulations
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Money Laundering is the way in which criminals conceal the origin and true ownership of the proceeds
of their criminal activities so that it appears to come from a legitimate source. In order to
combat this activity, all estate agents are now subject to Money Laundering Regulations and
are required to obtain some additional personal details from customers who instruct us to sell
a property on their behalf. Therefore, our staff need to carry out checks to verify the name
and address details customers have provided; this may include the inspection of personal documents
such as a passport, driving license or a recent utility bill. We also need to collect customer's
date of birth, country of residence and nationality.
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Security and Privacy
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The Data Protection Act puts obligations on users of personal information and lays
down principles for its use. One principle states that information has to be processed
fairly and lawfully. This means that you are entitled to know how we intend to use any
information you provide. You can then decide whether you want to give it to us.
When contacting us, the information you send will be secure using the Customer
Information Request Form. Any information you provide will be held by
Halifax Estate Agencies Limited, Halifax plc and Bank of Scotland. Relevant information
may also be held by our licensees, agents and service providers. Members of the HBOS group
of companies may use it to inform you by letter, telephone, e-mail, SMS texting or otherwise
about any products and services offered by our group of companies and selected third parties,
unless you have asked us not to do so. We may record telephone conversations to offer
additional security, resolve complaints and improve our standards. All our employees are
personally responsible for maintaining customer confidentiality. Unless you have given us
your consent, we will not provide information about you to companies outside our group to
use for their own marketing purposes.
Cookies - and how we use them
By clicking on the submit button you agree that we can use your information in the ways described.
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Our Service Aims
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We endeavour to make
our sales details accurate and reliable but they should not be relied upon as
statements or representations of fact and they do not constitute any part of an
offer or contract. The seller does not
make any representations or give any warranty in relation to the property and
we have no authority to do so on behalf of the seller. Services, fittings and equipment referred to
in the sales details have not been tested (unless otherwise stated) and no
warranty can be given as to their condition.
We strongly recommend that all the information which we provide about
the property is verified by yourself or your advisers.
If there is any point of particular
importance to you, we will be pleased to provide additional information or to
make further enquiries.
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If you are the seller, we'll explain our obligations to you
under the law when preparing your property details, and ask you to approve and
confirm the accuracy of those details, to ensure everything we say about your
property is true. For this reason, we
may not be able to include certain information unless you can back up the
details with proof (eg planning permission documents), the precise nature of the
tenure and evidence of works of improvements or alterations.
We also ask you to tell us about any changes
which affect your property details, when they happen.
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Trading Statement
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Halifax Estate Agents, Halifax Property Services, Hobbs & Chambers, Donald
Beale, Wellar Eggar, Frank Farr and Gale & Power
are trading names of Halifax Estate Agencies Limited.
Registered Office: Trinity Road, Halifax, West Yorkshire HX1 2RG. Registered in England No. 2045933.
Halifax Estate Agents is a trading name of the licensees of Halifax Estate Agencies Limited.
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Best Interests
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An estate agent's primary responsibility at all times is to
act in the best interests of the seller, while being fair to all prospective
buyers.
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This means that if you ask us to sell your home for you, we
work for you in return for a fee and look after your best interests.
To successfully sell your home, we need to
attract buyers by offering them a good service and a fair deal.
We help potential buyers as much as we can,
so our sellers get a result and everyone is satisfied.
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Submitting Offers
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An estate agent is obliged to submit all offers to the
seller up to exchange of contracts unless specially instructed, in writing, by
the seller not to do so.
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Sometimes, more than one offer is received on the same
property. When this happens, we submit
all other offers to the seller, even after your offer has been accepted – until
contracts have been exchanged and the deal becomes legally binding.
But as the buyer, we'll advise you of the
existence of any other offers made, and the action you may want to take.
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Accepting Offers
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It is the seller who accepts or declines any offer.
At any time right up to exchange of
contracts either the seller or buyer is legally entitled to change their mind.
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It's up to you, the seller, to decide whether to accept an
offer. However, this is where having a
good estate agent like Halifax Estate Agents can really help.
There is nothing more frustrating than receiving an offer on your
property, then finding out later that the buyer doesn't have the necessary
money to go ahead, or there's a long chain which will delay your move.
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At Halifax Estate Agents we check to ensure that potential buyers are
genuinely interested in the property and are in a position to buy, before
advising you. Once we believe we've
found you a genuine buyer, we check in more depth the details of that buyer's
offer, usually by way of a face-to-face interview.
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If there is more than one competing offer on your property,
we'll advise you which offer we think you would be better off accepting, based
on our assessment of each individual buyer's circumstances, and your own moving
needs. But the final decision is
entirely yours. You can ask us to
invite all parties to increase their offers, if you wish.
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If you accept a particular offer, it will be on the basis of
either of the following:
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Offer accepted subject to contract
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This means you've instructed your solicitor or conveyancer
to proceed. Although you haven't made a
legal commitment, you've agreed with the buyer that you're going ahead with the
sale at the price offered by the buyer.
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The only obligation at this stage is a moral one – the 'Do
as you would be done by' principle applies!
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If you want us to, we can mark your property details
in-branch as 'Sold Subject to Contract', along with your For Sale board.
We'll continue to tell you about any other
offers received, and keep the buyer informed of these offers as part of our
'fair deal' service.
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Offer accepted conditionally
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This means you accept an offer on condition that, for
example, the buyer receives a satisfactory mortgage offer or survey report, or
obtains a subject to contract offer on his or her own property.
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In this case, we'll ask whether you want us to continue
actively marketing your property, during this conditional period.
Whatever you decide, we'll still tell you if
other offers are made on your property.
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Declining Offers
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We would refuse to be involved in any arrangement where a
seller wished to mislead a buyer with regard to the existence or amount of any
other offer. Once the sale and purchase
of a property is underway, we'll liaise with the legal representatives of both
buyer and seller, right up until exchange of contracts.
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Personal Interests
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An estate agent must disclose any personal interest in
selling or buying a property.
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This rule protects both buyers and sellers, and ensures no
underhand dealings can take place. Each
Halifax Estate Agents employee is personally responsible for declaring, in writing, if they are
related by family or business association to the buyer or seller of a
property. That person must then have no
further involvement in the property negotiations.
We provide training to all our staff to remind them about their
obligations.
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If you are Selling a Property
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You should be aware that in the course of dealing with the
sale of your property we may be asked to provide mortgage and general house
buying and selling advice to any potential buyer of your property.
This is quite normal practice – but if we
undertake to give advice to buyers we will inform you, and we will at all times
act in your best interests.
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We may also be given certain information by buyers – for instance,
details of their salary and personal finances – on a confidential basis.
Such information is used to help us make a
recommendation to you about the ability of the buyer to proceed, but we will
not be able to give you any information of a confidential nature unless the
person who has provided it agrees.
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If you are Buying a Property
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We have an obligation to sellers to make sure that potential
buyers are able to proceed with the purchase.
This means we have to be sure that you have the finances available to
buy the property and as a matter of routine, therefore, we ask you for
information about your finances. We use
this to make recommendations to the seller about your ability to proceed.
Unless you agree, however, we will not
divulge any information of a confidential nature to the seller or to any other
party. For example, if we give you
mortgage advice, any information you give us about your finances will be kept
confidential and will not be disclosed to anyone other than the lender you have
chosen without your permission.
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Complaints
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Our aim is to please - but we know that sometimes things go
wrong. If you have a problem, we want
to know. A member of staff will be
happy to help either over the phone or at a branch.
A copy of our complaints procedure is available on request.
If you need further help, ring our Customer
Helpline on 0845 600 8000.
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Complaints we cannot settle may be referred to the
Financial Ombudsman Service or the Ombudsman for Estate Agents depending on the
nature of the complaint.
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