to be tired of CF vendors

[AnnoyedEstateAgent]

I’m an estate agent, I am responsible in my branch for valuing properties and bringing them to the market.

Our selling fee is 1% which is mostly standard for high street agents in our area, with the exception of a couple of cheapy agents and Purple Bricks etc.

Yesterday I went to value a property and the vendor was the biggest CF I’ve ever met. I went through everything with him, he said he was impressed and liked the way we worked. He then asked fees, I told him it was 1% with no hidden extras and he started ranting about how expensive it was and could I do him a better deal blah blah. I was happy to negotiate and I’m used to customers trying their luck but this guy wanted me to do a fixed fee that would have equalled 0.35% when I said no he told me to “run along and speak to my manager to get it authorised” in the most patronising tone ever!

What I don’t understand about vendors like him is they say they like the way we work, they’re impressed with our knowledge and expertise and they trust us to sell their home - but they don’t want to pay for it it’s like going in a shop and trying to haggle down the price of a tv, it wouldn’t happen.

I understand people want to save money but I think some don’t understand that actually we are a business and we aren’t selling your home out of the goodness of our hearts, we are there to make money!

Grrr.

Ive haggled down the price of a tv before- hardly unusual

Neither is negotiating estate agent fees.

Your entire job involves negotiating. Im surprised youre surprised

@araiwa as above, I fully expect vendors to want to negotiate and I’m very good at it, but I find it unbelievably CF behaviour to ask for 0.35% selling fee

I think EA’s get negatively stereotyped and this gives a certain kind of unpleasant person the feeling they can treat them like crap. Also with the prices of houses these days 1% can seem a lot for what people assume is just “putting the house on the internet”. Having dealt with a private sale chain without the help of an agent I appreciate it’s so much more than this, esp. in driving the sale through with annoying vendors and buyers at every turn!

Rudeness to that degree would mean I’d be telling my manager we’d not be taking his business. If he’s like that now can you imagine him under the stress of a sale?

On the basis that the only "negotiation" estate agents seem to be able to do for clients is to concede to the buyer's demands, l I'm not surprised you're surprised but surely that how the world works. You have your price, they have theirs. If you're not happy, then don't take the property.

When I last sold a house and the buyer reduced their price right at the last minute, the agent had the nerve to say "well it's only £1000". We'll knock it off your fee then shall we?

I think it’s pretty unusual to find an excellent estate agent so you seem to be in a minority

I’ve recently bought and seen about 30 houses and just ONE of those knew all about the house / area and was helpful. The rest just read off the particulars / said “I don’t know” to pretty basic questions (boiler, windows, local area) / traipsed around after us while we asked the owners questions.

Many of them hassled us by calling repeatedly (despite being asked to only be contacted by email) and suggesting completely inappropriate places - two bed flats (when we are after a family home) and stuff that was wildly above or below budget.

I’m not surprised sellers get a bit fucked off when 1% actually equals thousands of pounds and where they actually find the value is in the property being advertised and taking calls of potential viewers.

Decent agents are very very rare.

Tbh it’s probably how rude he was that’s really got my back up. I’m used to negotiating with vendors but they’re usually polite!

Depends what price? 0.35% on a million pound house does not sound unreasonable? It doesn't take more effort to sell that than a £250k house?

Do you know how much Rightmove charge Estate Agents to advertise properties? They are extortionate. And most Estate Agents use Rightmove (and similar portals) as that is where buyers look. The majority of the commission fee is spent on advertising and administration costs - it is not profit.

We've never had a good experience of estate agents in years of renting, nor when we bought our house.

In fact, this house went on the market at 5pm on a Tuesday. We were the second people to view it at 10.45 on Wednesday. We put in a full asking price offer at 11.15am, moments after getting home,having spent that half an hour in the house (we lived 4 streets away). I then spoke to the EA on and off all day to see if they'd spoken to the vendor (who worked from home and was present at the property when we viewed it). They kept fobbing me off. The vendor had recognised me during the viewing as our DC attend the same school. So at pick up I caught up with her and asked her to put me out of my misery. She was perplexed and had no idea what I was talking about. I asked if she'd spoken to the EA. No. Turns out the man who viewed it 15 minutes before we did wanted to bring his wife back for a second viewing. So they were trying to schedule that before giving the vendor our offer in the hope of raising the price through a bidding war.
The vendor told them that that wasn't going to happen, and that they were going to take our offer. Absolutely disgraceful behaviour and a way to earn more money.

I don't think you'll get much sympathy on here OP. That said, if someone told me to 'run along', I'd want to punch him in the face. That was rude.

As others have said, I'm sure you're a very diligent, excellent estate agent who does a superb job for every clinet. Unfortunately, you're in a profession a huge number of people aren't very good, and take a lot of money for very little. It must be really frustrating and it is unfair, but you're bound to be tarred with the brush of the incompetent and lazy majority I'm afraid. That doesn't excuse the patronising rudeness from this client, though, which is bloody awful and not on at all.

I think the percentage fee annoys some people. If you're selling a £200K house and making £2K, and a £400K house makes you £4K, what additional work is involved to warrant double the fee?

If you're tired of CF vendors, then you're perhaps in the wrong industry.

I only say this because -

In your post you speak about "we need to make money", but you haven't perhaps shown him the value of what you're offering him as a service.

Therefore he's going to take that flat statement of 1% as CF'ery of your own...because he doesn't understand the perceived value.

Isn't there some merit perhaps instead in restating the value of what you offer? Why 1% is considered a real bargain when you start to unpack what that involves?

Treating every new client as an opportunity to explain to them the market forces, the usefulness of your experience, the fact you have qualified buyers waiting, the fact you have in house solicitors and mortgage advisors that can speed up the process, etc etc...?

You sound jaded which I'm sorry to hear, I respect that jobs like this can contain tiresome timewasters etc

But every new prospect is a fresh opportunity, and a person who may not have heard or understand what estate agents actually offer. They will have preconcieved ideas and your job is to overcome those immediately by replacing them with your offering.

NB I am not an estate agent, I work in the City, but the principles surely apply to this industry, apologies if I am wrong.

@Tixielix

This is a superb post agreed with you !!

Is that why PurpleBricks etc and the disruptors are offering fixed fees, because they fully realise that people are fed up of being taken for a percentage when the theoretical costs of marketing a house are the same no matter what the asking price?

I understand people want to save money but I think some don’t understand that actually we are a business and we aren’t selling your home out of the goodness of our hearts, we are there to make money!

And people don’t choose you to sell their home, essentially a business transaction, out of the goodness of their heart. They choose you if they think you are absolutely the best deal and absolutely should haggle for the price. You don’t have to accept it. Maybe you are in the wrong business as you don’t seem to be handling this well, you need to toughen up a bit.

the fact you have in house solicitors and mortgage advisors that can speed up the process, etc etc...?

This is the absolutely opposite for me, I hate it when the estate agents try and push all their services on you

@GinDaddy, it's the same with other professions though, eg Banks, who charge a % of the estate value for doing probate. It's why I was so glad my late DF named me and my brother as executors as I did probate myself on his very straightforward estate and saved a fortune. The EA (and Bank) fee should be fixed - maybe on a sliding scale - depending on the complexity of the work involved.

@highheelsandbobblehats

My estate agent did the exact same thing.

I was the seller and was not happy.

@ThatssomebadhatHarry I’ve been in my role for 12 years, I think I’m just fine thanks

I can well believe that a vendor wants the full EA service for PB prices and can't see why there is a difference! You get what you pay for!

I would have politely said that the CF vendor was free to use a fixed fee service if they wished, but that x was our final offer here and that if they wanted to use our services then get in touch. Whilst hoping that they didn't get in touch and became a client of someone else because they don't sound as if they would be fun to deal with during a property sale and purchase!

I would have thought it was the negotiating itself that was the problem.

If you charge 1% but are open to ngotiation you are essentially saying 1% is too much. As soon as people get in the mindset that you can drop the price if they negotiate well, you open yourself up to them trying to push it as low as they can.

If costs are high (e.g. Rightmove) then you might do better to have clear, transparent packages with set prices so people can choose what they want.

e.g. a board outside the house and an advert in our window costs £500 and houses sold like this have an average time to sell of 90 days

but

a board outside the house, an advert in our window and a post on Rightmove costs £1500 and houses sold like this have an average time to sell of 60 days

or

a board outside the house, an advert in our window and a post on Rightmove an an agent actively recommending your house to suitable potential buyers costs £2500 and has an average time to sell of 30 days

and so on.

These figures are obviously make believe but might be a better way for people to choose a price point they are comfortable with and based on their need.

p.s. being rude to you was not on.

I'd just think if he was that much of a CF at this point, just how awful would he be with potential buyers? Just how hard would you have to work for that fee?

Would he be a "no children viewing" vendor? Or a "get the cheapest Solicitor" regardless that they are slow, and drag everything out?

But then I have had some excellent Estate Agents - the ones who sent someone to get searches when our first solicitor dragged his feet, the ones who bent over backwards to patch a broken chain back up, and the ones who produced a fabulous booklet and still send us a Christmas card.

(I have also had the crap ones who are: too pushy, bring people to see without checking first, and who basically showed how useless they were when they went "joint sole agency" and tnees of new people came from the new agency.)

1% seems cheap to me. I paid 1.5% when I sold my last home,
Friends in Spain paid 5% (yes, five) to sell their property.

Oh - and it's only when you see the quality of one brochure compared to another, that you can tell what you are paying for. I would almost certainly go back to one Agency because their package and photographer was so much better. (But then I'm in that market.)

@movingontosomethingnew

The cheek of them! We've said if we sell, they won't be getting our business. The vendor wasn't happy either and said that she'd only chosen them because they were also selling the house that they wanted to buy, so she figured it was easier to have it all running from one place. They knew she wanted a quick sale so as not to lose the house they wanted, so despite dressing it up as 'we wanted to get you more money', it wasn't about that at all. They did not have her interests at heart. She's paying them. They should roll over to whatever she wants quite frankly.

it’s like going in a shop and trying to haggle down the price of a tv, it wouldn’t happen

Why not?,what world do you live in?

It does happen i do it, our custmers do it, course its not the done thing in England is it:?.