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 👋

Ok I changed my mind after remember the letting agency that got my parcel returned after it was sent to my old address.
YABU.

Wrong. I sold and bought my last property through the same agent. A single person independent. Absolutely great. Nothing was too much trouble, could contact him anytime and he'd get back to me really quickly. Fixed very reasonable price. The way all estate agents should be.

Ive worked in EAs in the past doing viewings and admin work - you would be horrified at the number of buyers and sellers who dont tell the truth which is one reason why good estate agents these days ask to see proof of funds. EAs can only comment on things they know about the property - details such as when the boiler was serviced come out during the buying process and will be backed up by documentation.

We get fed up of people asking ‘is the loft boarded?’ On a first viewing - its not really a deal breaker is it?

Most people will know if they are interested in a property fairly quickly when they walk into a house so there is no point going into details about a kitchen other than saying ‘this is the kitchen’ - you only need more information if you are thinking of making an offer which in most cases (i know perhaps its a but different at the moment) is after a second viewing.

This is why it is better for the agents to show houses as owners will often go into huge detail about everything and proudly talk about all the things they have often done themselves - badly - and end up putting buyers off!

I agree some agents are shit but NOT all of them.

We pulled out of a potential house purchase because I didn't trust the agents who were dealing with the both sale of our property and the one we wanted to buy.
In four months I couldn't get them to put in writing or even say that they had accepted our offer, were reluctant to let us have a second viewing (new build), and we're always vague and uncommunicative.
Our only offer on our house came from an hour long viewing we did ourselves - ones they did took about 5 minutes.
I was sure we were unknowingly in a race with other people for the new house.
Months of delays meant that we had the chance to re-think our options, so rather than be let down by them further along the line, and letting down the lovely family who wanted our house, we decided to withdraw.

I've had some twats, some not twats.

Letting agents/estate agents (often they do both jobs) that I've had to actually threaten to get them to do work and point out laws that force them to do as they are told. Shouldn't have to be doing that.

Had agents that clearly preferred other tenants over us and while I was trying to find a flat, kept handing over flats to others straight away while making me fill out forms again and again. I ended up walking away and found another agent, got a house the same day.

The ones we dealt with to buy this house were fine. I felt bad though, they must have thought we were going to screw them over. Things kept going wrong with getting the mortgage and we only got it the week before completion. Absolute nightmare.

@NiceTwin

Our purchase took a long, tedious 8 months due to the estate agent. They asked us for a deposit to show we were committed to purchasing the house, we refused. At that point, she just went on a complete go slow.

Not really surprising then. It’s pretty standard practice.

I don't think it's correct that they work for the seller. They work for the people who will bring them the most money. If they do lettings as well as sales, their interests are best served by getting the best deals for the landlords who they have a long term relationship with. Definitely not the seller who might not buy another property for years or might be moving out of their area.

That's why you might get lots of unsuitable buyers or not have offers passed on. The EAs can then get the seller to lower the price and enable a landlord to get a good deal. The reduction in commission is easily offset by the money they subsequently make from managing the letting of the property.

Applies to relationships with developers too

We dealt with a couple of god awful estate agencies when we were in the market for buying a house last year. One bare-faced lied on more than one occasion and another showed up to a viewing nearly half an hour late with no apology and then proceeded to usher us out of the house within about 5 minutes as she was late to another viewing...

Fortunately the estate agent we purchased our eventual house through could not have been more of a pleasure to deal with so there are definitely some good ones out there!

I have never had an issue with estate agents; it's the conveyancers that are generally the issue I've found.
Don't return calls, send out template letters that have no relevance to the case in hand. Pay extra for a solicitor but still only get a barely literate assistant that doesn't appreciate job stressful buying and selling is.....

@Blossomtoes no it isn't standard practice to pay a deposit.
It was the first our solicitor had heard of it and strongly advised against.

I'm surprised you'd be content to pay one with the amount of sales that fall through.

We would never recommend the EA we last used. Condescending to the little woman (me) and very unhelpful wise boy in a big suit.

When my dad sold his house and rented a property, the EA refused to show him the house he was interested in renting as he couldn't move immediately but in one months time. So he didn't bother. A few weeks later the property was still not let, the rent had been reduced and so he enquired again. He has been living there for 7 years now. He keeps the house immaculate, always pays on time and the landlord has missed out on thousands of pounds in rent (due to the reduction) all because the EA didn't want to show my dad the house originally.

Oh and she has been really rude and obnoxious since over things like the gas fire not working or getting the roof fixed after roof tiles came off and damaged my dad's expensive car (it could have been his head ffs!) etc.

One thing I learned the hard way about EAs. They always work for the Seller.

Given it's the seller who pays them, they are very much supposed to be working for the seller.

I didn't realise this was a particular secret.

The almost foolproof way the Tories would have to be re-elected despite being the worst government in UK history would be to pass an effective law governing estate agents that was enforced 100%. I am sure that a consultation with all the suggestions of practices to be outlawed could give them all they needed to include in a law.

Not that for one second I think the government would do such a thing.

I'm sure there are good EA out there, but I've never met one that hasn't been economical with the truth, or turned from seemingly nice to out and out shits when we didn't do what they wanted.

Have bought, let, rented and sold. In a variety of areas.

However, there is one EA in our local town that are the lowest of the low. Would sell their own grandmother without compunction. Totally bullying, lying and cheating. I have no idea why anyone uses them.

I'm glad we don't have to use one at the moment, always sends my stress levels sky high!

The small local branches are better in my opinion. We had a really good EA selling the last house, who took the time and trouble to really get to know the house, did all the viewings himself, gave prompt feedback after viewings and nursed the purchasers through the process.

Before him we had two large chain ones, both of whom were pretty poor. In fact, the manager of one of them responded to my email complaint by acknowledging they had not met their own ‘high standards’. They failed to give feedback on the few viewings they arranged, so after a week, I enquired whether there was any feedback. They arranged a viewing and failed to turn up. They arranged a viewing for a time we said was inconvenient and could they rearrange. They just turned up when we had specifically said not to.

The second lot over promised and completely under delivered and their photos were rubbish.

I've had mixed experience. Used an online fixed fee company to sell last time. It was £750 vs the £4500 traditional one. But that was a house that sold itself first day.
Used one to sell my mums house and they were very good.
When buying I don't listen to a word they say. Every house apparently has offers on it/ more viewings booked in etc.

We are looking to buy and of the four estate agents we’ve approached for viewings, two of them wouldn’t even book a viewing without us sending our AIP. Is this not normal practice?