First experience in selling house

In 1992 when I was still working in Penang, I decided to sell the compact design house in Taman Melawati in KL through a real estate agent. The agent finally got a buyer offering a price of RM118,000. The buyer paid up the 2% earnest money to the agent who informed me that the money would be kept by them as part payment of the agent commission. The buyer later paid up the balance of the 10% down payment and in the mean time applying for housing loan to settle the balance of the purchase price. I engaged a lawyer in Penang to handle the S&P agreement for me and the buyer had her own lawyer. Later I learned that the buyer was working as a clerk in a legal firm.


One day, while waiting for the buyer to obtain the housing loan, I received a notice from the buyer stating that she wanted the return of her 10% down payment back because my agent had given a misrepresentation of facts to her regarding the house. I called her up to find out more details. She was complaining that there were cracks on the walls of the house. I told her that all these cracks were not structural cracks and they were there all these while and she should notice them before decided to purchase the house. She claimed she just accepted what the agent told her about the condition of the house and she did not make any inspection of the house. I did not believe her story because she was staying in the same area and her house was just about 200m away. However I was still prepared to agree to call off the deal provided she agreed to accept that I should not be responsible for the costs of my lawyer's fee and the 2 % earnest money still in the custody of the agent as it was not my fault that she did not inspect the house which I did not believe. But she insisted to get back the 10% down payment in full. My lawyer advised me to settle with her. I did not mind to loose few thousands dollars but I could not swallow feeling being cheated or bullied. Being a clerk in legal firm she knew most people would prefer to avoid going to court as it would incur further legal fees and the outcome of the case would still be unknown. After that meeting with the buyer no further action was taken by the buyer for a few years and I thought she had given up trying. Then one day in 1996 the buyer took the case to the session court in KL and I was prepared for the long drawn battle in court with her. It was going to be costly and inconvenient for me as I was serving in Kuantan , Pahang at that time.

I engaged the lawyer in KL to defend me. The first hearing for the case was called and it was my first experience in court. I went to the court house one hour early waiting for my lawyer who did not appear as he had a punctured tyre according to him. He did not attempt to contact me to advise me what to do and I failed to appear in front of the judge that day, although I was in the court premise. I could have just lost my case for that and later I learned that the other party's lawyer was covering up for my lawyer to request for a postponement of the hearing.

Without any explanation my first lawyer recommended me to another lawyer and I was more than happy to change the lawyer after the earlier experience with him. This new lawyer always wore a pair of black gloves . She was friendly and ever ready to listen to my side of story. She always tried to make me feel comfortable to exchange opinion with her on the case. Every time before appearing in court, she always reminded me to pray to God and to address the magistrate "Your Honor". At first I felt very funny but later I got her message that judges were after all human being and their judgement could be influenced by impression and not totally objective.

The case took three to four sessions of hearing including one which was postponed after a long wait in court that morning only to be told later that the magistrate had a toothache. It was rather lucky for me the case took less than a year to close. One important tip that my lawyer did not inform me was that the magistrate needed to take down all the words said in court by both parties. I had to give my evidence in the way of dictation to the magistrate allowing him time to jolt down notes. Luckily  I had written down what I wanted to say in court the day before and I could occasionally refer to my notes otherwise my line of thought would not be that smooth and clear. My lawyer's approach was to show that the cracks were not a serious problem and the focus of our argument to the case was very technical which my lawyer depended solely on me . I had failed to convince her one non technical evidence which I felt might be useful for our case. At last during the last session of the hearing upon my insistence my lawyer agreed to produce this piece of information which was the receipt issued by the real estate agent to the buyer acknowledging receiving of 2% earnest money in custody for the purchase of the house.

Finally the verdict of the case was delivered and the judge ruled that the real estate agent had acted as the agent of the buyer as well therefore there was no ground on misrepresentation of fact as claimed by the buyer. The buyer lost the case with cost but I had no heart to claim the cost from her as the 10% down payment was just enough to cover the cost incurred by me. I had no heart to make money out of her misery. Furhtermore the price of the house by then had risen and two years later I managed to sell off the house without doing any touching up for a price of Rm 180,000 to an enterprising malay guy who manged to get my contact through land office , spent a little bit effort and money to touch up the house and sold it off at Rm240,000.

My colleagues knew about the case, one of them told me that he had to pay compensation over and above the 10% downpayment to the buyer and the late Dr Hiew always admired me for taking the trouble to settle the case in court. I still feel that the first preference is to settle the issue without going to court provided it is on an agreeable principle as it is costly as well as time consuming and energy sapping for taking the case to court and I do not enjoy seeing people loosing.