My sister and I suffered at the hands of an equity release company. My father took out a ‘home reversion’ plan, where he sold just under one third of his house in return for a cash sum of only one sixth of its value at the time, back in 2001. After his death in 2007 the agreement was that the equity release company sell the house. THEY chose the estate agent, THEY set the price, and THEY decided whether or not to accept any offers. We were merely bystanders in all this even though we jointly owned nearly 70% of the house.

During the selling process the house was initially valued, but something must have been lost in translation between the interested parties as it was advertised by the agent at higher than the valued price. After 5 weeks, with not the slightest hint of a buyer, the price was dropped significantly. Nobody could be bothered to tell me; I only found out by looking at estate agent’s web site, but by then an offer had already been made and accepted. The estate agent then flatly refused to tell me the agreed price (I wasn’t their client). The original advertised price was £190K, I found out later from my solicitor they had accepted £150K, (A drop of 21% in 5 weeks!)

The offer was on condition that contracts would be exchanged after 28 days; however they let it drag on for a total of 47 days. When the sale did finally complete we had to pay over two thirds of their selling fees (Home Information pack, estate agents, solicitors), even though we had no control over the sale. There was no choice in this, the funds were withheld.

It is a total rip-off.