Estate agent - guilty as charged!

[RogerS]

Ha! Always knew they were charlatans.

Just received a mailshot from the agents who sold my flat. And guess who's flat they featured as 'recently sold'? Mine, of course.

But it gets better...they claim that it was sold for the asking price!! Illegal? Yes Unethical ? Yes.

So I've just dropped them an email asking for a cheque to cover the difference!

I'm not holding my breath but a small donation to charity perhaps might be in order.

 

[StevieB]

At the risk of opening a can of worms, I cannot see how agents justify the fees associated with marketing a property. I am in the process of selling my house at the moment and am having real problems with them. Complete lack of information, progression of sale and professionalism to put it mildly. I am telling them whats happening rather than the other way round. Because of this lack of interest in my sale the chain has developed a problem resulting in a 6-8 week delay which could have been prevented if the agents sales progressor had actually been progressing the sale. I am soooo close to going to the NAEA about their conduct, and will be if the chain falls apart as a result of their incompetence.

I would like to say that this is a one off case, and that not all agents are the same, but can only rely on personal experience so cannot!

And calm...... :roll:

Steve.

 

[RogerS]

At the risk of opening a can of worms, I cannot see how agents justify the fees associated with marketing a property.

Steve.

At the end of the day, the only function an estate agent fills is that of a very expensive and overpriced dating agency.

I can but sympathise. In the end, I changed agents during the recent sale process as the first bunch of cowboys exhibited the same lack of feedback that you seem to be suffering.

To be fair to the ones who sold the flat (and pretty quickly), my wife and I had an evening brainstorming what we might do to get a sale quicker and had come up with some ideas ourselves. The next morning I visited the new agent and saw that all their negotiators and manager were there. My opening gambit was to say that as they were all there could we brainstorm and come up with some ideas to move the sale along. To my surprise, they commented that they had been discussing the flat only the day before and then went on to suggest exactly the same actions that my wife and I had come up with...even to the same colour paint (which was spooky). So they clearly they had been thinking and so, in this instance, did actually add some value to the process. And I would use them again.

 

[Corset]

Just to confess again i am an estate agent. I worked for a small agent selling houses for 5years. We fault a losing war with the corporates whom promised the earth and did little. I visited every property i sold but this costs money and gradually people wanted smaller fees etc. How can you sell a property which you havn't looked at the house yet this is how most big corporate agents work. I have a massive knowledge of houses because of my work method but most negotiators don't even know the basic layouts most could be selling phones or kettles and their technique would be the same.
The second problem is most vendors want no sale no fee. This is fine but most people are naive and think their house is worth more than it is. This means the house is advertised for a long time and every advert cost about £100 in nottingham average fee is 3k it doesn't take many wasted adverts to add up, add the sky high cost of city centre offices, add in time wasters and you have a high fee.
I left the sales side to set up my own letting agents as vendors greed depresssed me. On one side they never got enough for their own house on the other hand when we got them 10,000 more we were to expensive.
I have based my lettings on no Bull#### and good customer service come november i think i will be the biggest student agents in notts hopefully. Vendors are not to blame but we have vilified the best agents and let corporates destroy our smaller excellent agents. They are more interested in insurance and mortgages than peoples homes.
Selling houses is a delicate art and if i hear one more person say they could do it better themselves :twisted: The problem is the good agents are few and so most people have a bad experience, good service cost but it is worth it.
If i sound bitter it is because i am, i left a job i loved because i knew in ten years i would be working for a bank/solicitor pushing financial services. I now specialise and have happy clients whom don't try and bankrupt my small overheads. My business partner and me discussed whom we would sell our houses with and we couldn't think of anybody, so i have sympathy but i blame the GREED>>>>

 

[Corset]

sorry don't mean to infer any greed to present company but i worked in city centre areas in the boom time and i might be a little twisted sorry
Basically hate the way corporates have finished of estate agents. Most negs can't even do the basics it is a disgrace. They go "its a nice house" etc yet ask for specifics and they havn't a clue. I but houses for clients and they have not got a clue i can't trust the opinion of any of them because they never leave the office. I wasted 2hours looking at a "done up block of flats" only to find every one had been painted magnolia with no other work and the value was out by 20k a flat dreadfull but i bet a couple of people wasted money on surveys.... :x

 

[RogerS]

Corset - agree with many of your points and can only empathise your own situation.

Regarding 'greed' IMHO is just as much down to the agent as the vendor in some cases where the property is not a bog-standard 'box'. Take my flat, for instance. Most flats in the block have sublty different layouts. You can take a look at other one-bed flats in the area and the price range varies hugely (£195k - £595k) and so the vendor can only have a view as to what their property might be worth. Then they get agents in to value and I agree the agent who usually values it the highest gets the business...or so perceived wisdom has it.

In our case we had four agents in to value the flat ..two were around price £x and this included Foxtons who have a reputation for over-valuing, and two agents valued it at between £40k and £50k higher! WE did our own research on prices but it was so difficult comparing like with like. In the end we discounted one of the latter two as their valuation reasoning simply didn't ring true to us and so we chose the lower of the two highers (if you catch my drift).

Your comments re Financial Services etc is spot-on. After the de-regulation of the financial services sector there was a feeding frenzy as all the banks bought up smaller estate agents...only to see many of them sell them years later having destroyed any 'value' that may have been present in the first place.

We can also blame the salary/commission structure of agents...first three months on a tolerable salary, month four drastically reduced basic plus emphasis on commission, targetted by number of viewings = ££ (regardless of whether or not the properties are relevant to the buyer), targetted on sales. If targets not met then one warning. Month two - targets not met then final warning. Month 3 - out the door. Same metrics as selling photocopiers .....

 

[StevieB]

Interseting to hear your view as an agent Corset. Have to say I agree with the financial services comment - our agent wanted to provide the mortgage, conveyancing and insurance services as well as sell the property. Sounds like it would be easy to have everything in one place but boy were some of the prices non-competitive! Being fairly financially aware I was able to undercut all his offers with outside providers.

My gripe is not so much with how agents sell houses (if I dont like an offer I dont have to accept it) but with the sales progression once the sale is agreed. To me the agent should be ensuring the sale progresses smoothly once a buyer is found, but in my experience once a buyer is found thats it, the agent sits back and waits for completion. As an example, when I sold my first flat, it was only after we had a buyer that we found out the sales progressor only worked 2 mornings a week! Any query outside those times was left until she was next in. In the end I went direct to the buyer (with their agreement) and we sorted most of the problems directly between us. Although this is not recommended it worked for us.

Also interesting to note your comment re no sale no fee. What you are essentially saying is those you do sell subsidise those you don't. Hadn't thought of it that way before but its still galling when you percieve a lack of service and then have to provide a large sum of money!

Cheers for being brave and owning up to your profession!

Steve.

 

[Corset]

With regards to sales progression this one was the final straw for me. You negotiate like hell to get the best price for your vendor and build a bond of trust between sellor and vendor then the corporates want you to pass it on to a sales progressor. These are often in a call centre and therefore don't know area, vendor etc. This results in stupid mistakes i always chased my sales to the end after all it was my commision if anyone was going to F**** up the sale it should be me. This often meant i had to guide both vendors and sellors
so they could understand the info given to them as we all know solicitors aren't that helpfull. Surveys with stupid meaning ie an original 100yr old slate is described as near the end of its life despite having 25years left. this always panicked first time buyers so i would always prepare them for the language used so they wouldn't panick. By the same token i saved 600,000 sales going south by getting vendors not to haggle over £500 and lose the sale.
Solicitors are no better they now handle conveyaning as a numbers game and use conveyaning exec (whom many are better than the solicitors as this is their only job) many have 50-60 cases on go at one time so there is no backup there. I often had to pick up paperowrk from solicitors by hand to get the deal done. To make matters worse corporates have their own legal arms now and they are ***** DO NOT EVER USE THEM. We always tried to guide them to 5/6 off the better firms but once again everybody thinks they are all the same and shopping around to save £50.00 is more important.
Basically my opinion is if you sell it you should see it through, that way the vendor and the purchaser know the agent and the duty of care folloew through. Furthermore the info picked up along the way is kept in one place.

 

[mr]

With regards to sales progression this one was the final straw for me. You negotiate like hell to get the best price for your vendor and build a bond of trust between sellor and vendor then the corporates want you to pass it on to a sales progressor. These are often in a call centre and therefore don't know area, vendor etc. This results in stupid mistakes i always chased my sales to the end after all it was my commision if anyone was going to F**** up the sale it should be me.

I have never come accross any other way of buying a house. Both times I have bought and sold it's been a case of dealing with one bloke in an office, occasionally a colleague if he was out etc. I've never come accross a sales progressor - what on earth is one of them, call centre? What a strange idea. Im afraid I wouldn't deal with any estate agent that worked in this way. As for Solicitors I've always found that your solicitor is your best friend when buying a house. He's on your side after all. My solicitor negiotated my most recent house purchase down by £30K, that's what makes him worth his fees.
Cheers Mike.

 

[StevieB]

Hi Mike, In my case the sales progressor is simply the point of contact in the estate agents that is supposed to keep on top of your house sale/purchase. It is not necessarily the person who sold the house or who valued it / sorted out the sales details.

From Corsets description it seems some large firms have a seperate department and or call centre to handle this.

I suspect it is supposed to help to have a designated point of contact for queries, and I can at least walk into my agents and speak to the progressor. The problem is every question is met with the answer 'I don't know, will get back to you' and you never hear from them again. The most recent problem is the chain turned out to be 2 sales longer than we were told, and the buy to let investor we thought was below us turned out to be a mover and a first time buyer. Since the estate agent is supposed to check this stuff (they claim to have been calling up and down the entire chain every week for 6 weeks to confirm everything was progressing smoothly) you would hope they know the chain details!

My solicitor is indeed the epitomy of efficiency, and I would have no problem using her again or recommending her services. However she is not there to answer estate agent type queries and deals only with the legal aspect of things.

They say moving is one of the most stressful things you can do, and having done it twice and being in the middle of a third I entirely agree!

Steve.

 

[dedee]

Corset,
I understand what you have said and agree and sympathise. I do however struggle to understand their fees. I be mush less suspicious if their fees were fixed and their costs more transparent.

When we bought our house 10 years ago for £107k the %fee was the same as it is today but the house is now valued in excess of £300k. I do not think estate were making a loss then so they must be raking it in now, assuming of course that their costs have not increased 3-fold.

I hope to be selling within the next 6 months and the whole process feels me with a certain amount of dread - I may even have to provide a Sellers Pack - god help us.

Has anyone any experience of selling without an agent, eg on-line?

Andy

 

[RogerS]

Dedee

I tried it without much success. I had more agents calling me trying to sell it on my behalf...usual bs 'we've got a buyer looking for exactly what you are selling'...followed by my comment...'well, in that case you can afford to drop the fee to 1%'...I received two real enquiries.

You may be more lucky. Many of the sites I looked at had very little property in my area/type and so I came to the conclusion that there would not be that much interest in potential buyers particularly as the potential 'pot' of properties wasn't that large. Most of the more interesting websites such as PrimeLocation aren't available to vendors.

 

[Anonymous]

We found our house on the web - very easy and quick.

Only hassle we had was with previous owners solicitor who simply did not do their job but was a 'friend of the family' and so could do no wrong in the eyes of the previous owners.

 

[Corset]

i Have to say advertising is expensive so if it looks to be good to be true. These sell yourself packs are a waste of time.
Solicitors refusing to deal with agents is often why estate agents is often way they look stupid because you know there is a legal problem they just don't tell us therby messing up the chain. Many solicitors are aware if we chase them they will be hassled which altough great for the information chain/ our clients is not good for them.
The case of your solicitor saving you 30k is a classic example, one party is chuffed to bits with the deal the other probably feel let down( just guessing don't know details) i expect they will blame their agent for not being all seeing and knowing.
I think sellers packs will be a good thing for modern properties everybody with and older house prepare to be shafted you will be paying for so many reports and surveys i think an 18th century cottage is going to cost about 2k extra just to produce the extra surveys also do not forget SAP energy ratings.
I would also like to point out the banks own the agents, the surveyors (e-surv and Your Move for example) and the solicitors. I think you will find as agents fees get cheaper the other areas will make up for it.
The problem is house buying is not an exact science it is not like buying a loaf of bread therefore people get it wrong and not because they want to rip people off. People belief that we are all crooks is causing the good agents to leave. A house is only worth what a person will pay for it and not what the house two doors down went for. I have been in some right crap that the owners thought was a palace when they don't sell they always blame us as they don't want to hear sensible feedback thereby creating the fear of telling the truth from agents.
I do think that the percentage fee is unfare but then again so is no sale no fee, it is only sustainable if you have sky high fees. If you paid for what you got it would make sense. When the sellers pack kicks in this may begin to happen.

 

[Guy]

It is a common problem world wide, i had an agent around the other day he quoted 2% of the sale price which would be around $12,000 he then asked for another $2000 for the advertising.
And if i go buy another one ill end up with solicitor $1000 and the sodding state govs stamp duty which would be about another $17000.
So in all i end up paying over $30,000 just to move house so i can get a bigger garage.
I was thinking of knocking one of there lovely signs they stick up outside the house and painting it with" for sale by tender" and do the advertising myself.