Estate Agents - What the actual !!!!

Mint8

Mint8

Mint8

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25 Oct 2013
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So after many years we have decided to move house - have been looking online and last Friday I rang to arrange a viewing on a property.

Met with an answerphone which told me they would ring back as "your call is important..blah blah" - as of now still no call back...

Meanwhile over the weekend saw another property via a different agent that looks promising. Rang his morning and spoke to someone who sounded helpful and asked a lot of info about why we were moving etc etc. Said they would call back "within the hour" once they had spoken with the vendor....still waiting - not even a courtesy call to say they had not been able to fix a date/time etc but would call me back when they had.

For those who have been through this process recently Is this the standard of service I should be expecting ? I would have thought getting viewings would have been a key part of their business but seemingly not !?

rant over.
 
Generally appalling, I don’t understand how an entire industry can be so bad.

That said the estate agent I am selling my house with is very good and the estate agent of the house I am buying isn’t too bad either. I found my estate agent through the local Facebook group so may be a good place to start.
 
Estate agents are generally awful, and wholly unnecessary when you really think about it.

Ours did **** all to be honest. They certainly don't do anywhere near enough to warrant the commission they expect. I even had to correct all the factual, spelling and grammatical errors in the advert they made for my house.
 
Selling houses I've always gone with local agents. I've had big companies turn up and overestimate the price then not hear from them again.

Far better service from a local(ish) setup even if they have links to bigger setups.

Buying, it's hit and miss. Often you'll never hear anything on a Friday as that's the big exchange day
 
Friend of ours is selling her house and told us that someone was interested in a viewing but couldn't get through to the estate agents so had to pop a note through her door to arrange a viewing.

She's now changed agents.
 
The thing I really enjoy is turning up to view a property and finding that the appointment has been cancelled or was never even confirmed with the vendor, but the estate agent didn't bother letting you know. Happened to me more than once.
 
Mint8 said:
So after many years we have decided to move house - have been looking online and last Friday I rang to arrange a viewing on a property.

Met with an answerphone which told me they would ring back as "your call is important..blah blah" - as of now still no call back...

Meanwhile over the weekend saw another property via a different agent that looks promising. Rang his morning and spoke to someone who sounded helpful and asked a lot of info about why we were moving etc etc. Said they would call back "within the hour" once they had spoken with the vendor....still waiting - not even a courtesy call to say they had not been able to fix a date/time etc but would call me back when they had.

For those who have been through this process recently Is this the standard of service I should be expecting ? I would have thought getting viewings would have been a key part of their business but seemingly not !?

rant over.
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When I sold my last house, my ex demanded we sell, when the estate agent admitted we had 15 people who still wanted to see the property. We sold for about 15-20% under the properties value because my ex wouldn't work with me to get the best price and I just gave in to her. Wouldn't let me pretty the property up either. Once they have an offer some estate agents pressure you to sell so they don't have to do anymore work for their fee.
 
ANDREW GREEN said:
When I sold my last house, my ex demanded we sell, when the estate agent admitted we had 15 people who still wanted to see the property. We sold for about 15-20% under the properties value because my ex wouldn't work with me to get the best price and I just gave in to her. Wouldn't let me pretty the property up either. Once they have an offer some estate agents pressure you to sell so they don't have to do anymore work for their fee.
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This doesn't make sense really, they get commission based on the sale price, so it's in their interest to get the most they can.
 
Estate agents are the middle men. The problem is always the middle man. They just want a bigger cut. Unfortunately, they don't care if you want to sell your house or if you want to buy a house.
 
VincentHanna said:
This doesn't make sense really, they get commission based on the sale price, so it's in their interest to get the most they can.
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Normally yes, but they're not stupid. If they see that a sale could fall through and sit on their books for the next 6 months, they'll take a lower commission just to get it over the line.​
 
Jono8 said:
At least they do something relatively important and that requires a reasonable bit of training in.
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Oh kur last one was good, it was the buyers that was bad, getting her unnecessarily worried for no reason and being slow.

That's where having a local estate agent who cares about the sale really helped, they were very helpful in being a go between and kept on top of their solicitor.
 
Jono8 said:
Estate agents are generally awful, and wholly unnecessary when you really think about it.

Ours did **** all to be honest. They certainly don't do anywhere near enough to warrant the commission they expect. I even had to correct all the factual, spelling and grammatical errors in the advert they made for my house.
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Same, we also had to point out flaws in the photos they were choosing. On a sunny day they managed to make the sky grey!
 
I remember when we bought our house most of the estate agents were useless and didn’t listen. “I’m going to be working in Manchester, but I don’t want to drive in every day, so I’m looking for somewhere with good transport links.” I’d tell them. “Ok, how about this place - it’s right by the a580, take about 45 minutes to drive in.” Ok, thank you, next. After a while of this, this older lady at one of the first places we’d been called us up and told us she’d got a house 100 yards from a train station, which we went on to buy.
 
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