General Chat

Uzzi, you are paying the estate agents to sell the house and they have a duty to do as you instruct. If there are any problems they will have to answer to you and you would be within your rights to ask for compensation i would have thought..

Make sure you contact them asap and get this sorted.

Change the locks, tell the estate agent why - because you entrusted them ( and them only) with the keys, andthey have let them go out , and potentially be copied. this compromises your security.
Copy in the solicitor and ensure the costs are deducted from their final bill.

They have no need for the keys now, get someone else to keep them.

Well said Penny.

Erm.......Uzzi is in Spain, the house is in the UK.

Its not uncommon for estate agents to let the buyers have keys prior to completion,if they are dealing with them,,,,,,,, the buyers will of course have been checked,,,owners leave all that to the agents if they live away,,,,,,they are probally on the agents books and have bought others property with them so can be trusted.


look at the paperwork to see any small print within the agents and yours agreement.

I have viewed empty property alone without an agent....they need all your full details.

Uzzi just a wee note to say when i worked in the bank, i was in the dept that sent the monies between solicitors. Our local sols would not hand over the keys to the buyer until the funds were in the sols account.

If it was the last friday of the month, it was really busy and our cut off time was 3pm. We used to have tel calls all day from buyers waiting to get into their new property but they couldnt until the monies were through and sale completed.

If i was viewing a property today, you would measure up when the estate agent took you round as i wouldnt expect to get in on my own especially with other peoples property still there, no no that is out of order.

I agree with someone who suggested getting the locks changed just to be safe and as for the estate agent, I would be on that phone as soon as giving them a blast!!

Hope you get it sorted soon. keep us posted and let us know what happens.
Take care
Florence in the hebrides.

I would be furious ,and be on to the estate agent asap.

When we were selling my parents house we had a similar tho slightly different situation.
A neighbour to my parents (who always kept an eye on things) met us in town one day and said ....'Ive seen the house is sold then'...which it wasn't at that time.
We said 'No'..he replied that he'd seen a prosptive buyer coming out of the house with a handful of runner beans.
Hubby had planted part of the garden as he was there most evenings ,and every weekend ' because we were doing it up for sale'...Very fertile soil,so he used it.

I rang the estate agents straight away ,he said she'd asked to look at the property again (she put an offer in which we didn't accept) but she han't been given the keys for access.
I believe the estate agent that he hadn't given her the keys the second time, but he contacted me to say that the keys had gone missing !
They were on a keyring with a car on them ,so very distinctive...I think he must have handed them to her at some stage ,cos I'd warned him that the one door was iffy to lock and perhaps she was checking that lock and kept the keys...Will never know!
Estate agent paid for a new set of keys,and as the house was then under contract to be sold suggested to him to advise the buyers to change the locks..and that he paid for it to be done.
That prosective buyer didn't damage the house or remove anything ,there was a new kitchen,bathroom suite and some of our cast off wardrobes in there...but who knows what could have happened,as it was she just nicked our runner beans!!
I guess anyone could have but she was seen in the 'act' so to speak!!

When I bought my house, I had to pick up the keys from the vendor (sister of the lady who had died there) to measure up, then I gave them back, then I borrowed them the day before I moved in to clean the house as it had been empty for a while and I had a 5 yr old. Even then I had to return the keys to the vendor at the end of the cleaning day, and had to wait till the money was transferred after midday next day before I could have the keys again. All that while the house was empty, only some carpet left and that was nothing special.

Hope you can get this all sorted Uzzi, I think the Estate Agents are wrong to give out keys without escorting the person to the house, they are just being lax because you aren't around.

As if you needed any more hassle.....

Stay calm, hon

Lizxx