Did you thank/ buy a gifts when moving house for your estate agents/ solicitors etc?

[badaboomed]

Hello, We are hopefully completing on a house tomorrow.

Increasingly im seeing examples of people giving people involved in their house sale some form of thank you gift

Is this the norm? Will our estate agent/ solicitor/ mortgage broker feel we are terribly ungrateful if we just pay them as normal?

The EA we used, did his absolute best for us, was professional and always kept in contact and did an excellant job. Thanks to him, the whole sale process went exceptionally well considering the turns and roundabouts, he advised and guided us through out, we had a perfect house sale because of him.🤗

The estate agent left us a gift. That’s the way round it should be!

In my case, absolutely not - had to repeatedly chase to get anything done (simple probate sale, no chain). The mortgage broker who found a brilliant deal for my daughter and negotiated with the vendors on her behalf, absolutely x

I am in the middle of a very stressful and long drawn out purchase right now. The only thing I would send my lying cunts of estate agents is a poo in an envelope.

FFS a gift for someone being paid £££’s to do their job, nah don’t think so.

What for though? They weren't doing you a favour! It's their job! That's why you are paying them

I got a box of chocs for our conveyancer and our broker.

No. I leave a bottle of wine for the buyers though (unless they've been awful).
I've had agents give me wine or similar when I've bought though.

After paying vast sums to both? No.

No. I did buy flowers for my mum’s estate agent, because she was very nervous about her move and he was lovely. She then moved in with me temporarily, and I definitely was in need of gifts.

No they got enough money out of me

Er no

No way! They made enough with their fees. The solicitors were crap and advised we offer over asking. We didn’t and got it for under asking because it was overpriced. They also completely missed that this was a listed building. It was a bit of a shock when we applied for planning permission. And the estate agent didn’t need to do anything. Houses here (Edinburgh) practically sell themselves.

God No!

They've done a job and charged fees/comission

That's enough

We’ll be paying our EA nearly £12k. So far they have been good, but would I get them a gift? Er no! I’ll leave our buyers a bottle of wine.

Only heard anything from the EA a couple of times, mainly for them to moan about paperwork that they needed, they haven't responded to any requests for help.
The solicitors can get routed, they have been incompetent through out and will be lucky not to get a review.

fuck em

However the mortgage broker has been absolutely fantastic and gone above and beyond what they needed to do and have earnt every penny of their fee, they will get a fantastic review and recommendations for friends to use them.

Quite! They're not exactly doing it free of charge.

Considered it when our remortgage got sorted finally. But after the bait and switch when it came to the mortgage surplus I figured a good review was sufficient. And they need all the good reviews they can get!

You’ve already paid them a hefty fee for what was hopefully a professional service. They’ve done well enough out of you already. They are not your friends. TBH I’ve always struggled to work out what estate agents do to earn my money.

EA?!?F**k that - they are charging you a percentage of your house price, they should be buying you a gift!!

I paid them thousands of pounds - that was thanks enough!

I bought my estate agent a bunch of flowers but our sale took two years, had several buyers pull out and I spoke to her my often than I spoke to my mother. I felt because it was so drawn out she went above and beyond so wanted to thank her personally. I still wave hi to her now when I pass the estate agents window.

I think people should be able to differentiate between the fee charged by a conveyancing firm is not what the conveyancer is making! They will be on a fixed salary and bonuses are pretty unusual. They are the ones dealing with the stress on all sides; personal liability (including prison) for non compliance with due diligence, the requirements of which are bordering on forensic accounting to establish client source of funds, constantly changing mortgage lender requirements (amazing how many buyers forget it isn’t just their money being spent on the house), reviewing and interpreting and explaining hundreds of documents, huge attention to detail, pressure from agents, clients, other lawyers, and having to make each client feel like their transaction is the absolute main priority. Then you have the actual legal stuff.
It doesn’t have to be a tangible gift. I promise you, even an email saying ‘thank you’ if your conveyancer has gone above and beyond is a nice thing to do and will mean a lot.
Some of them are shit, but most of us work incredibly hard, under huge workloads, against constantly changing goalposts for very standard salaries.

Ordinarily I wouldn't, however, my solicitor was amazing and he put up with a lot from me chasing. It was the middle of covid and everything was too slow for my impatient ass. It was near Christmas when we finally exchanged so I dropped round a couple of tins of roses to their office when dropping off paperwork.

Gods no. They’d had enough pounds of flesh from us.