Why do estate agents do this and does it work?

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I live in a town you've probably heard of and which has a reputation for being a bit chavvy rough.

Around the edge of the town there are a variety of newly built large housing estates, all of which have a kind of village name although they don't have any village amenities and are very much part of the town. Schools catchments are existing schools in the town.The residents if asked where they live would always say "village name" rather than town name.

I have noticed that estate agents have started describing theses "villages" as on the outskirts of Posh Town. Posh Town is in fact four miles away with clear green space between rough town and the estates.

So, if you know the area, you know theses estates are not on the outskirts of Posh Town, they're on the outskirts of Rough Town. If you don't know the area and are looking for a house on the outskirts of Posh Town, you're going to be sorely disappointed when you find out where the house actually is, although it will seem like a bargain if you've been looking at houses in Posh Town.

Do these kinds of tricks work to improve sales?

Nope. Not with Google maps...

It might work on people who are new to the town and don't know the areas. Everyone else who knows the town is just going to roll their eyes

Nah. Anybody with enough brains to have saved a deposit for a house purchase is going to have enough savvy to google. The only thing it will do is generate search hits. They probably hope some of those hits will like the property enough to not be bothered which town it’s in.

I live in a manky northern city. One of the huge estates tries to not be associated with the city, but everyone knows it’s part of the city.

Anyone with half a brain is going to do their own research before they hand over their hard earned.

i'm always suspicious of places described as "on the fringes of...." or similar phrases, as it always means "close to Naice Place but still actually Manky Place"

If you get a chance watch the film "The Chain"

It is very amusing and interesting at same time, it is about a chain of movers on one day, I know it sounds boring but it really isn't, cos it shows all the reasons people move

My favourite part is an upwardly mobile "posh" family that are moving from Kensington to Chelsea, anyway the mum is a real snob and thinks she is moving up the ladder in houses. She is fine with a Chelsea address and thinks it is really posh

Anyway, as they are driving off with their stuff in their new jaguar car, she notices the neighbour down the street is also moving and so she asks the removal men where they are moving to hoping she can out do them but they are moving to Belgravia

She is not happy at all

When they move into their new home in Chelsea she says well it is practically in Belgravia just cos she is now not happy living in Chelsea address and wants it to be thought of as Begravia

I suspect it's not necessarily the local estate agents marketing the properties who are doing this; but the builders/developers of these estates, who have instructed local estate agents to market the all the properties on the estates, and have insisted that the EAs list them that way.

I worked in the business for years - and have seen this happen frequently.

It’s not just estate agents that do this, I was taking down somebody’s address at work and they were very insistent that I must put placename then East on it. I was a bit bewildered and asked a colleague about it and was told the place was one town but one side run down the other side [East) considered more desirable. A while later we happened to drive through the town and the imaginary dividing line between desirable and less desirable, I can honestly say I didn’t notice a difference between either! All I will say is even in East you’d have to pay me to live there and yet apparently it was very exclusive (code for full of Hyacinth Buckets)

Our old vicar used to live/work in Sussex

He told us that when he was getting to know his parish (people and places)

If he said to someone "you live in Brighton don't you?" They would reply "HOVE ACTUALLY!"

Down here we have cottages with cobbles outside then yellow lines. You literally can only fit in a smart car and then park right next to your wall to not go over yellow lines. Estate agents describe it as a parking space.

My favourites are:

“12 miles north of ” instead of “0.5 miles east of ”

and

“In catchment for OFSTED recognised school” when OFSTED have put said school in special measures.

Yes, and they’ve been doing it for years.

We used to live in Blackheath, back in the 80s, which was v naice and fiercely expensive. Next to Blackheath was Lewisham, which was a bit rough in those days. Properties for sale that were on the Blackheath side of Lewisham would be described as being ‘Blackheath Borders’.

I do it. I always say I live in x village, y city when my real postcode address is x village, z town. Z town is not nice. Y city is lovely - and I live halfway between the 2

I worked in an estate agency admin team for a few years - you would not believe how batshite people get over their particulars. We had people covering a 2 page brochure in 50 amendments, people who supplied separate sheets of information, people who insisted they lived in x when actually it was y (we usually refused to change it as we just used the address generated from the postcode). Honestly, people screaming, shouting and demanding all day long. I had a terrible to-do with one man who was very insistent that his downstairs second living room was described as a bedroom, as this would make it a desirable 4 bed rather than a 3. He simply would not have it that bedrooms are not open plan with kitchens

Did you post about this place before? The OP is very familiar. Something to do with annoyance that the residents were saying they were from Village name instead of town name and trying for posh area schools.

Haha yes. Don't think it works though.

Certainly the ones round here describe 3 bed houses as 4 bed houses if there's a dining room downstairs... Interesting that it could be the vendor insisting on that though.

I love a good floorplan and location map though. Sorts the wheat from the chaff and saves a lot of time.

Another funny one. We have solid oak floors but they have been there for about 40 years - amazing quality but I dont have a receipt because we never put them in.

An agent came around and said under the misdescriptions act he couldn't put solid wood floor unless we could prove it. We asked him to simply look - its a beautiful floor! However, because we couldn't prove it he would write laminated? WTH is that all about - that certainly fails the misdescription act which he was so concerned about!

I put it down to one screwy person.

We have that round here with postcodes. There’s a naice Victorian terracey area in a good catchment area that’s one postcode, and down the road an OK but very 70s ex council estate that has a requires improvement school. The postcodes are very similar, so the estate agents tie themselves in knots trying to conceal the less naice postcode. As if people are going to be so thick they turn up at the viewing and notice it’s not a leafy posh area before forking over 400k.

There’s also a town near me that has a bit of a bad reputation, but it has one nice estate on the outskirts. Whenever you meet people from said estate they’ll say the name of the neighbourhood, not the town. I like to wind them up a little and say innocently ‘oh is that in X?’

I wonder if enough people call it whatever village if eventually it becomes its name and not associated with x Town. Especially after say 10 years. But it's a bit of a long shot.

Estate agents do loads of stuff which I think surely can't work for them.

This happens everywhere.... a family member moved to new Eltham... they kept referring to it as new Eltham village! 🙄

My local area has been trying to add village to its name for ages also!

Do you live in Medway OP?

Yeah, the “Borders”/“Village” phenomenon is alive and well in Lewisham.

Haha I think estate agents try every trick in th book

I was once selling a house in the north east in an area that thinks very highly of itself and the local estate agent took some awful shots of the outside of the property.

I suggested using some photos we had taken about 2 months ago when we were in the early stages of thinking about moving and when the garden was looking magnificent - but she quoted that ridiculous Misrepresentation line.

I argued that some of her overpriced and been on the market for yonks houses had photos in the snow.
I got my way