About

Terms & Conditions

This page contains important information that tells you about legislation governing estate agents, and about how Lytham Estate Agents conducts its business. Any action or request for additional information conducted on this site does not constitute an agreement between Lytham Estate Agents 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.

​

The Property Misdescriptions Act 1991
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. The act is enforced by the Trading Standards Authority. Lytham Estate Agents fully supports the principles of this legislation and take great care to produce accurate and realistic property details. 

​

Data Protection Act
Any information you provide on the Contact Us screen will not be retained for marketing purposes unless we have your written permission.

Our Service Aims

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. 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.

​

Trading Statement
Lytham Estate Agents is the trading name of David Tinsley Limited. Registered Office :Lytham St Annes Estate Agents LTD Registered in England No: 08445851. Registered Office: 24 Longacre Place, Lytham St Annes, Lancashire FY8 4PN. Company Registration Number XXXXXX

​

Best Interests
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. 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.

​

Submitting Offers
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.

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.

​

Accepting Offers
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. It’s up to you, the seller, to decide whether to accept an offer. However, this is where having a good estate agent like Lytham 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. At Lytham 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. 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. If you accept a particular offer, it will be on the basis of either of the following:

Offer accepted subject to contract - 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. The only obligation at this stage is a moral one – the ‘Do as you would be done by’ principle applies! 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.

Offer accepted conditionally - 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. 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.

​

Declining Offers
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.

​

Personal Interests
An estate agent must disclose any personal interest in selling or buying a property. This rule protects both buyers and sellers, and ensures no underhand dealings can take place. Each Lytham 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.

​

If you are Selling a Property
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.

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.

​

If you are Buying a Property
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.

Complaints

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 01253 796996. Complaints we cannot settle may be referred to the Ombudsman for Estate Agents depending on the nature of the complaint.

​

Legal
You may download, store and use the material for your own personal use and research. You may not republish, retransmit, redistribute or otherwise make the material available to any party or make the same available on any website, online service or bulletin board of your own or of any other party or make the same available in hard copy or in any other media without the website owner’s express prior written consent. The website owner’s copyright must remain on all reproductions of material taken from this website.