The buyer of a property is entitled to expect from the real estate agent a minimum of details on the building he proposes to buy.
Although a real estate agent is not a construction professional, he must, as a real estate professional, have a minimum knowledge of construction processes in order to inform his client of them, judged the Court of Cassation in a judgment rendered on March 16.
The Court, according to this requirement, criticized a real estate agent for not having known, or in any case for not having told his client that the type of pavilion he was buying, taking into account the techniques and dates of construction, was likely to contain asbestos.
Essential characteristics of the property for sale
This information on the construction is part of the essential characteristics of the property for sale, insisted the magistrates, and they should therefore be included in the sales agreement drawn up by the agency. She could not consider them useless on the pretext that a negative diagnosis had been established by a professional.
The real estate agency could not, in fact, rely completely on this ultimately erroneous diagnosis, maintaining that it would not have questioned a priori the skills of the professional diagnostician and that it could legitimately assume that its conclusions were correct.
Real estate credit: find out the lowest rates for your project
The real estate agent, in this case, disputed having to participate, with the diagnostician, in compensating the new owner to allow the asbestos removal operations, the sum representing approximately three quarters of the purchase price, but the Court of Cassation ruled reject his arguments.
Reproduction forbidden.