Property selling process

@jottylo With regards to your price I would be suspicious conceptually, POA if your agent is registered and reputation I would not be concerned.

Good luck, but even if POA is special, if the agent has a reputation, if should be fine I would think,

I hate lawyers, even if English speaking, do you have a good relationship with your real estate agent?

Please go the the UK gov site to find trusted lawyers, not on a forum.

I have an apartment in district vii in Budapest, which has been managed by a property management company. They have approached me to say they have a buyer (although we have not discussed selling it) and their commission would be 5% + VAT. The offer appears acceptable to us, but it is being suggested that the property management company acts as our POA and that the funds would go through them. Does anyone know if this is normal, as it seems unusual to me, and makes me nervous.
Can anyone recommend an English speaking Lawyer who could handle this sale.
Thanks for any advice on this.
-@jottylo

Better you get your own lawyer so you know who is representing your interests.  The 5% plus VAT seems high - double what might be even vaguely acceptable but my idea might be out of date. Have you checked the price of apartments in that building?   Lawyers have access to historical records unlike mere mortals. Seems wrong as it's public records.  You can also look online to see pricing which might give you a better idea.

When we paid for our house, after we signed the contract, we paid the bank accounts of the owners directly, there and then with the lawyer observing. The owners then confirmed they had received the money, the contract was executed and the house was ours. The money never passed through the client account of the lawyer.

If you speak Hungarian, you will do better than the rest of us.

By the way, I think 5% is too high, 4%  is already high something should be arranged with buyer. But if you are happy, that of course is good.

I do not know how time you have, but a real agent with the proper incentives (x % until this price and xxx extra for this can help (it worked for me and my wife))

In general what is good is that the agent should be and often is your supporter (a lawyer is not too important)

By the way, I think 5% is too high, 4% is already high something should be arranged with buyer. But if you are happy, that of course is good.
I do not know how time you have, but a real agent with the proper incentives (x % until this price and xxx extra for this can help (it worked for me and my wife))
-@cdw057

I agree.

Could be the buyer is a friend of someone in the property management company. And the 5% is just a pitch to scrape off more profit.

Being here, one has to develop a cynical mind and think about motivations, linkages and who is really who and who is acting for whom.

If you're nervous there must be a reason for it.

5% and VAT seems a bit high.

My husband speaks Hungarian and he said this offer is something he would pass on.

It's hard to sell now with the economy etc. and them just coming up with a buyer out of the blue and wanting to handle the funds is a red flag .

Don't have a lawyer to recommend but you defo need one to work for your interests.

On second thought, there has to be some reason they want to handle the money transaction.

Perhaps they have some legal way to hold onto any funds for a period of time before releasing them to you.

Some banking scam that allows them to make interest on your money for a few extra days, weeks, months IDK.

These are the real criminals all smiles and handshakes.

Thanks everyone for your replies.  Having done some further research we have decided not to proceed with the sale (only verbally accepted so far).

Thanks everyone for your replies. Having done some further research we have decided not to proceed with the sale (only verbally accepted so far).
-@jottylo

Sounds wise.  They could have been trying to take advantage. 

Prices in HU are falling as far as I know. Like Marilyn says, presumably due to increasing prices and inflation.  Might be their assumption everyone is trying to cut their costs.

On the other hand, it could be real estate agencies are trying to make some money when the market must be static. Only today we received an advertising leaflet in our post box asking if we wanted to sell our house, we could contact them. Not that we're going to sell up.  Never seen that before here.  But that sort of circular advertising for property goes on in the UK all the time but there's a housing shortage there.

In Austria, its 3% and you can haggle that. 5% seems too high to me.

In Austria, its 3% and you can haggle that. 5% seems too high to me.
-@SimCityAT

Yup. 2-2.5% seems normal.

Of course, the percentage based costing is in any case, complete nonsense. 

The percentage bears no relation to the actual work they have to do.

Fixed price would be more appropriate.  It's not exactly rocket science.

A couple of years ago we saw real estae agents charging 2 1/2% to sell for you.

I know they dont do much, in the US they do multi- listings. They work with other real estate agents to sell your place if their co. doesn't have a buyer  with them, they offer their clients homes and share the commisionwith another co. No extra charges to you.

My son got his real estate license in NV but that was back in 2008 when the market went in the dumps. Not a great time to break into the job.

He never had time to be an agent and work his other full time job.

The going percentage was 7% in Ca.

Not sure what it is these days.

In HU 5% is very high.

We actaully sold our own home ourselves in Ca. sold within 2 weeks.

We sed a small co. to help with the paperwork and they oversaw how the sale went but we did the selling, showing and contacting the bank ourselves. God knows where we had the energy or brain power back then but it wasn't very hard to do.

( My husband is smart I guess?)

He wasn't going to pay anyone 7% to sell his house when he knew it was a good house and would sell itself.

The co. was called, "help U sell". They had a licensed agent who just helped you with idea to sell property yourself and he would look over the deal befre you went to far with any offeres.Worked out great for eveyone. We were able to offer our house for much less then the market was going for and still didn't lose out on the commission.

If we can get our minds together once again, we probably will try to sell this old flat by ourselves when the time comes. You can always then lower the price by 2 1/2 % at least and not lose to an agent.

I know in Hungary the agents don't do as much for the clients as they do in the US fr their pay.We saw abut a dozen flats with differnt agents when we were buing in Budapest. They were shwing us flats we didn't like, they barely listened to what we wanted, they were trying to move their none sellers first.

We just bought a newspaper and found our flat oursevles.

We did have to pay 50% f what the stupid seller had gotten himself into with an agent to release the flat from some sort of contract the seller had singed.

It wasn't legal for him to sell it himself because he had stupidly already given the right to sell to an agent. The agent we only saw one time in their office when we paid them to be allowed to buy the flat. That burned us mentally knowing they didn't do a thing for us but we wanted the flat and it was the best overall deal we found at the time.We had to find our own lawyer etc.

Never sign anything unless you understand what you're getting into 100%.

A couple of years ago we saw real estae agents charging 2 1/2% to sell for you.
I know they dont do much, in the US they do multi- listings. They work with other real estate agents to sell your place if their co. doesn't have a buyer with them, they offer their clients homes and share the commission with another co. No extra charges to you.
My son got his real estate license in NV but that was back in 2008 when the market went in the dumps. Not a great time to break into the job.
He never had time to be an agent and work his other full time job.
The going percentage was 7% in Ca.
Not sure what it is these days.
In HU 5% is very high.
We actually sold our own home ourselves in Ca. sold within 2 weeks.
....as much for the clients as they do in the US fr their pay.We saw abut a dozen flats with differnt agents when we were buing in Budapest. They were shwing us flats we didn't like, they barely listened to what we wanted, they were trying to move their none sellers first.
We just bought a newspaper and found our flat ourselves.
We did have to pay 50% f what the stupid seller had gotten himself into with an agent to release the flat from some sort of contract the seller had singed.
It wasn't legal for him to sell it himself because he had stupidly already given the right to sell to an agent. The agent we only saw one time in their office when we paid them to be allowed to buy the flat. That burned us mentally knowing they didn't do a thing for us but we wanted the flat and it was the best overall deal we found at the time.We had to find our own lawyer etc.
Never sign anything unless you understand what you're getting into 100%.
-@Marilyn Tassy

7% in CA seems outrageous. That's mad.

When we sold our previous house, we did it ourselves too. We had tried using real estate agents but they were useless. We just told them after about a year, it was over and our contract with them was finished. It took another 2 years for a buyer to turn up. We had stopped living there by then.

We made signs using professional sign writers with a burner phone number and a throwaway e-mail address. As it happened, someone just knocked on the door. The buyer hired a reputable lawyer we knew of anyway who lived about 200m away. And that was that. We hired vans and moved it all ourselves. Took me about 4 weeks to do it and I had to get helpers for the last couple of trips - couldn't move our wood burner as it weighs 200kg.

The buyer was guy who lived around the corner and had seen the sign when we were walking past,  We've seen the house since and it's been expanded and rebuilt substantially.  The buyer was a construction type person and he worked on it with his brother.  Good luck to them! We were glad to see the back of it - it was a money pit for us.

The market place for real estate in Hungary is a bit rubbish. What gets me is that we cannot easily see historic market prices for property. I do not know why this is restricted. In my own country, this is freely and easily available public information. Very annoying.

One amusing thing about the real estate web sites are the pictures. We see pictures with people in them, shopping on the tables, grandma asleep, mess in the background, old cars, cows, cats and dogs, piles of trash. Obviously the concept of marketing hasn't reached some people. It's not like people don't have good cameras. Every smartphone has one!