ESTATE AND HOUSE AGENTS. A person exercising the calling of a house agent in England is required, under a penalty, to take out yearly a licence upon which is charged excise duty, unless he is licensed as an auctioneer or appraiser, or is an agent employed in the management of landed estates, or a solicitor or conveyancer who has taken out his annual certificate as such. In this connection a person is deemed to be a house agent if he advertises for sale or for letting, or in any way negotiates for the selling or letting of any furnished house or part of any furnished house (any storey or flat rated and let as a separate tenement being for this purpose a house) ; subject, however, to the qualification that no one is to be deemed to be a house agent by reason of his letting, or offering to let, or in any way negotiating for the letting of, any house the annual rent or value of which does not exceed £25.
His business is to endeavour to find a person willing to become a purchaser or tenant and then to communicate his offer to the owner. Unless express authority is given to the agent to sell or let, and for that purpose to enter into a binding contract, the principal reserves his right to accept or refuse the offer. As a rule, a house or estate agent has no authority to receive payment on behalf of the principal. Where he is employed to procure a tenant, he must use reasonable diligence to ascertain that the person to whom the property is let through his agency is fit to be a tenant. He does not, however, in any way guarantee the pay ment of the rent. A house agent may not, for or in expectation of payment, prepare any deed relating to the sale or letting of real or personal estate. There is, however, no similar prohibition as to agreements not under seal.
House agents are usually remunerated by way of commission. The scale adopted by the Institute of Estate and House Agents embodies the rates usually charged. In the absence of express provision upon the subject between the principal and the agent, commission is payable when the latter has found a purchaser or tenant willing to buy or take property upon the terms upon which the principal intimated to him his willingness to sell or let it.
Most auctioneers, in addition to holding auctions, carry on the business of house and estate agency. (See AUCTION AND AUCTION