ESTATE AND HOUSE AGENTS. A person exercising the calling of a house agent in England is required, under a penalty of L20, to take out yearly a licence upon which L2 is charged as a duty of excise, 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 connexion 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 L25. A house agent who is merely instructed to act in the usual way of his calling has no authority to bind his employer by a contract. 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 payment 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, and it is a common practice for house agents to charge for the preparation of them.