AIBU - All Estate agents are *uc*ing snakes 🐍

[tinx]

Title says it all… estate agents are the scum of the earth sick to death of them and their bullshite lies
They bang on about sellers being time wasters, in my experience EA have wasted so much of my time
No integrity unprofessional lying low life twats all of them !!

Any EA’s on here please give us some advice on how to deal with other alien/reptilian/zombie EA’s

Thanks 👋

Yep, we had the ones that didn't pass on our offer...twice. Then just the bog standard lies that cost tens of thousands to fix.

Some are good, some are rubbish.
Last one I used to sell was brilliant. Photos were lovely without being distorted , house sold in days. She liaised right up to and including moving day, pushing everything along.
Agent I bought through was pretty rubbish and didn’t want to be involved beyond sending me to view the property, shown around by the owner.
Can understand your frustration if things aren’t going smoothly as it’s a very stressful process at the best of times.

@tinx lots of people gave you some great advice on the other thread (maybe you could link to it) about that particular issue- many agreed that it is standard in many places to ask for an AIP and proof of funds before an offer is accepted because otherwise the seller doesn’t know if you’re a complete chancer. If your solicitor is prepared to confirm then that might be different but from my recollection before you said it was just your mortgage broker who aren’t bound by the same professional standards. Regardless the estate agent can’t force you to offer more on a property (the AIP will still depend on an accurate mortgage valuation in the sum of your offer) or buy one which is more expensive if you don’t want to. Yes there are some horror stories about estate agents but in my experience most are absolutely fine and you need to work with them if you want to get access to the best properties and then get the deal done (they are much better at pushing things on than solicitors in most cases).

@Heronwatcher

Hi thanks for your reply I’m a user of 16 years on here thank you very much !
I’m not the op of the other thread my issue isn’t with providing AIP or bank stamens

My issue is my offer was forwarded to a vendor because I would accept their in house broker over theirs

@Heronwatcher

Hi thanks for your reply I’m a user of 16 years on here thank you very much !
I’m not the op of the other thread my issue isn’t with providing AIP or bank stamens

My issue is my offer wasn’t forwarded to a vendor because I wouldn’t accept their in house broker over theirs

Typos sorry

They have a "look" too
The men all have jaunty hair and shiny suits
I have had many dealings and can only think of one that was actually nice, did what they said they would and treated me as an intelligent, articulate human being.

The EA I am currently dealing with has added 3 months to our purchase by lying to me that they'd spoken to the sellers solicitor, lying to the vendor that they'd spoken to my solicitor, to the point of giving us exchange and completion dates when my solicitor had not received a single document from the sellers side. It was an absolute fantasy. Neither solicitor came out of it well, but they were lazy and uncommunicative rather than lying to my face.

We got royally fucked over by an EA.

They were sweetness and light until the end at exchange and they turned and made our lives absolute hell to get the sale done.

Fucking bastards.

@Summersdreaming

Oh my gosh that’s awful

I’m getting angry now ?! I feel like going to the EA’s today and raising hell with spotty ana the branch manager who lies like the devil

I feel sick that’s I’ve been had like this !!

The first time i bought the estate agent was bloody awful. The most recent time we moved, the estate agent was great but our solicitor was an absolute shitty nightmare who we caught lying multiply times.

I think the system in England is the problem.

We had both, good and bad in our ten years or renting till we managed to buy. One particular estate agent was amazing and gave us the best advice ever. Also had one found with his hands in my pants drawer. As a direct result of that one we never allowed viewing s if we were leaving our rented house to go to another. You can refuse all viewings whilst you leaving there I don't think you can say all are bad.

We've just dealt with a liar of an agent so can sympathise. We've had such a shit time with incompetent agents, disappearing solicitors and various terminated house sales. It is soul destroying. However, I'm sure there are good ones. We had a great one when we were renting, and I have spoken to a couple of really genuine ones so they do exist!

We are starting the selling process again and have just met up with our new agent and he seems to be promising us the moon. It's nice that someone is encouraging and he's nice and all, but I will definitely take everything he says with a pinch of salt. I'm not getting my hopes up yet. Haha.

[quote tinx]@Summersdreaming

Oh my gosh that’s awful

I’m getting angry now ?! I feel like going to the EA’s today and raising hell with spotty ana the branch manager who lies like the devil

I feel sick that’s I’ve been had like this !![/quote]
Thanks. Hoping to complete next week for real this time but I can't get excited until the keys are in my hand.

@Kite22 estate agents have legal qualifications do they? That’s news to me.

I’ve only bought twice. The second time, the estate agent was patronising and sexist.

The estate agent we are buying through has been fine. The vendors solicitor on the other hand is absolutely shocking. We were due to exchange last week and have just found out they dont even have valid ID from the vendor. They are a massive company, recommended by loads of estate agents, I wouldn't touch them with a ten foot barge pole after this.

There are some in my town having moved in the last 2 years. But there are also a couple of EA here who are really helpful and supportive and dont rip you off either.

Buyers can’t really judge whether EAs are good at their job or not because EAs don’t work for buyers. They are instructed by the vendors, so it’s the vendor that they are providing the service to.

I’m not saying that all estate agents are trustworthy angels because they do use some dodgy tactics sometimes, but if that’s what it takes for them to provide a good service to the people who are actually paying their fees then so be it.

Think it depends on EA tbh. Our last ones when we where private renting where amazing. The ones we have now for renting are horrendous through from the one showing us the house in the first place, to the one we deal with for rent and then yesterday we had the compony director valuating the house and was so rude it was unbelievable. We also went to view a house last week to buy and it was a big country wide estate agents the seller was using. The EA doing the viewing literally just went round the house saying this is the kitchen, this is the lounge, this is the garden and so forth. I've now given up all hope.

"Scum of the earth" Really? I'm not an estate agent but I work with them and the ones I deal with are very professional and decent people. You've obviously had a bad experience but labelling them all as scum is extremely unreasonable. I've had cashiers in supermarkets be rude to me, should all cashiers be labelled as scum of the earth?

@FairyCakeWings in my case the EA screwed us both, the vendor was so angry he emailed and threatened to sack his solicitor, until it came out it was the EA who was lying to both sides. He could have lost the sale because I was very close to pulling out - unique property so not one that would sell again in a day.

Mine seem decent but I've got my eyes wide open- I had bad run ins with EAs when I was younger and renting

@Grenlei

Anyone with a job title that includes agent who isn't a secret agent, is invariably a test. See also letting agents and recruitment agents (the absolute lowest of the low).

I've found most agents are thick as shit, have no idea of valuing a property (when I sold my first house bloke from the 'local' agent tells me it's worth £X. I asked was it not worth more, as the mid terrace up the road had sold for slightly more, and I was a corner plot with a garage. He said he didn't think people wanted a garage. I sold for £25k more than his price. See also an agent with my current house who suggested I look on Rightmove with him to work out what it was worth! And another (when I was a cash buyer) who firstly refused to arrange a viewing or even tell the vendor I wanted to view as 'someone else was planning to make an offer' and then when I did view refused to pass on my offer. Lots of other incompetent lazy behaviour which is galling when they get £5k+ from sales for taking a few photos and sticking on Rightmove. Even worse shenanigans with letting agents and GDPR breaches and the like.

I am sure there must be room in the market for a reputable and competent property agents, because they seem to be in short supply.

Well no because, by your logic, that.would immediately make them a twat.

We have bought 4 properties in the past 5 years.
All have been via the same agent, in our town there are at least 10. Of these, 2 are not even considered when we were looking. I wouldn’t have thought about using them.
Our preferred agent s are helpful, honest and reliable

Easy to think like this if you’ve been unlucky.

I have personal experience of proven seriously dodgy behaviour, but I certainly wouldn’t tar them all with the same brush.

Incompetence would seem to be far from a rarity, though. My ‘favourite’ peeve is cluelessness about basic info, like the length of a lease. A bemused, ‘Oh! I don’t know, I’ll have to find out,’ - as if you’d asked about e.g. the colour of a bedroom carpet.

Not to mention that judging by a lot of the blurbs, you might be forgiven for thinking that an inability to spell was in the job description.

We dealt with three recently on a move . On one house we tried to buy the agents were evasive to the point of telling lies about things going on with the ( new privately built) property to the extent that we were supposed to be in last july , but when we dropped out and they got new buyers they are still not in.

On the house we eventually bought they were great and really pushed things through for the seller and us .

Our selling agent lied outright to our buyer without our knowledge and he found out . He was not happy and was threatening to sue them . It got very messy.