Sir,

AFTER looking at several houses to buy in Windhoek, we finally found “The One”, a townhouse in the Oryx Grove Complex (Olympia). We found it with the help of Glenda, a property agent of Greendoor Properties.

We liked the house so much that the day after seeing it for the first time, we met at the complex and discussed our 100% interest in purchasing the unit with the owner and property agent as witness to such discussion. Two other people also witnessed such arrangement, our parents.
The arrangement was to put a deposit down of N$100,000 and a 14-day option, in order to give time for our other two parents, who were on holiday at that time, to have a chance to see the house since they were also financially helping us with the purchase.
The owner, a Mr Daniel J. Kruger from Amalgamated Plumbing & Renovation Services, orally agreed to such an arrangement in witness of all of us.
This of course led to my girlfriend and me meeting the following day with the property agent to discuss with the lawyer such a deposit and option, and eventually contract of purchase.
All was well and our excitement of buying “The One” house of our dreams was slowly becoming a reality, or so we thought.
During our meeting with the lawyer, the property agent told us that the seller had changed his mind and would like to change the conditions of the option and keep N$20,000 for himself in case such an agreement fell through and no sale was made.
As we were indecisive whether to go for this unilateral condition from the seller’s side, Glenda, the property agent, proposed to us another option: that we sign the contract of sale immediately and this would take the bank about two weeks to finalise.
The financing would give us the 14-day option we wanted, and by then the other two parents would be back from their vacation and have had a look at the house as well. The lawyer agreed to this option and it was decided to take that route as advised by the property agent.
On Monday, 9 February 2009, we signed the contract of sale with the property agent also signing as a witness. She then took it to the owner to have it signed.
But, nine days later we heard nothing from the property agent or owner, until eventually we got a call from the property agent stating that the owner had decided to sell the house to someone else for a better offer.
So now we ask, was the contract ever given to the owner to sign? Were we tricked into a sale for the benefit of the owner getting a better offer to sell to another party? The owner never signed such contract meaning legally there was nothing we could do. But, what could the property agent do; the false hope of receiving commission gone with the wind? Why didn’t the property agent follow up on the contract as well?
The property agent’s response to all this was that she was disappointed with the behaviour and actions of the owner, and that taking him to court would be a long and expensive road to take.
We believe that the Estate Agents Board should look into this and try to do something about it.
The owner used us to push up his price, sell it to someone else and therefore showed that dishonest, selfish and conceited people will go behind other people’s backs in order to make a quick buck.