Estate Agents

[lily]

Anyone spring to their defence? We have been house looking with one of our sons, recently I contacted an agent who said the house I was enquiring about was "under offer" but we were welcome to view. During the viewing it emerged that not only had the offer referred to been accepted but also the prospective purchaser had paid for a survey and applied for a mortgage (no doubt paying a big fee for doing so). In fact he was only days from exchange. We said we thought this was totally unethical and were not interested in a contract race. The accompanying agent agreed but said it was the firm's policy. We would not deal with this agent again, fortunately my son has found something he likes marketed by another agency.

[keepersdaughter]

I was very frustrated when we sold our house in Norfolk. The estate agent prepared details that were pretty basic, not much in the way of imagination or adjectives. A short time before an aerial photographer had taken pictures of the neighbourhood, our house had a fairly large garden and backed onto a stud, (horse stud :)) so i gave that to the estate agent to help as selling feature. The purchasers saw the house online, came to see it, I shoed them around, pointed out all the features and told them about the neigbourhood and area. They put in an offer and that was it as far as the estate agent was concerned. No checking up as to how their mortgage offer was going etc. Weeks went by and I kept calling estate agent who assured me everything was fine, then we started to get desperate, no exchange of contracts in sight and our furniture and household items were already being shipped to US. We made do with loaned furniture etc. I finally called the estate agent and told him if things didn't move along we would have no choice but to house back on market or rent it out. That prompted him to call purchasers who it seemed had got some sort of loan from the bank weeks before and invested it in some high interest type investment, (which I think had the bank known would probably have got them in hot water). They then had to scramble and borrow money from relatives. The estate agents did virtually nothing to earn their comission, other than advertise it. I really wished we'd kept the house for many reasons, and not least of which was the prices went through the roof right after we moved. urghh.

[jazzactivist]

Although I think that your tales are the norm, lily and keepers, I must say that this time I can defend the Estate Agent that we used to sell our house. It was a small local branch of Remax and they have been absolutely excellent. They came and phoned on time every time, gave us good advice, matched our house to potential viewers very well, followed up each viewer with a call to me and to them straight away and kept us all informed, and everyone in their office has been so nice to deal with. It wa sdefinatley down to their expertise that we sold our house to someone suitable within a week, and for a good price. We are meant to exchange contracts tomorrow. I can't fault them and feel that they deserve their 1.5% of the selling price.

[dragonfly]

We went to look at a house a couple of weeks ago and when we got there the owner said they had accepted an offer but we were welcome to look around because she had been here before. They had accepted an offer and been let down. I think this makes sense because the last house we sold was under offer for five months then they backed out on the day of exchange. I wish I had had another interested party to call.
We ended up putting it back on the market at a reduced price for a quick sale.

[lily]

Still looking at houses, I think the market must be in desperate straights. Every time we reject something we get a really hard sell from the agent. My almost a daughter-in-law wasn't happy about the steep garden we saw at one property, the agent tried to convince her that it would be perfectly safe for the baby- nothing that gates and fences couldn't sort out. We saw one house where the neighbours were using the front garden as a sort of overflow rubbish tip- was tempted to find out the advantages the agent would have found for that!