Astounded at the nastiness of some of the responses here, it is totally uncalled for.
Even taking the four-weeks past difficult birth plus crying newborn out of the picture, nobody needs to be told at 7.50 am that there’s an estate agent at the door to value the house.
@PottyPet, your husband was a total dick. The mess-up on the time was between him and the Estate Agents, it wasn’t for you to fix. The automatic appointment time is neither here nor there, as that was the estate agent’s fuck up. Clearly your DP was able to communicate with the estate agent, as he was able to ask him to hang on while you got ready. Instead, of course he should have told him to come back at the previously agreed time. If the estate agent argued that he could only do it then, your dp should have firmly reminded him that the appointment was for 1-2, and if the agency could not take responsibility for their own cock-up, then he would be taking his business elsewhere.
If the estate agent really deserves to even be shortlisted for a contract, they should be bending over backwards to make you happy at this early stage. In my experience, the (almost inevitable) dropping of the ball (and frequently being a bit thick…) happens after the contract is signed.
You are the client, you call the shots. Letting a stranger into your home at 8 am when you feel undressed, unprepared, and conscious of personal mess about the place, is not calling the shots. Neither is pressuring your wife, who is nursing a newborn, to prioritise tidying for a wrong appointment time, over her and the baby’s wellbeing.
In fact, that pressuring you to “prioritise the house” when you were not fully dressed yourself, and had a crying baby to attend to, struck me as being particularly callous, disrespectful, and unfeeling. Your DP was being incredibly unreasonable by putting this pressure on you, and you would have been entirely in your rights to say “fuck off and re-arrange it, moran”, and then turn off your phone and take care of your baby in peace.
Given that this valuation was for marketing and not for a mortgage, there was absolutely no reason why it had to happen that day at all, after they messed up the time. Even if it had been for a mortgage, if they messed up the previously agreed time, the onus is still on the surveyor to re-arrange (although, I might be a little more polite and compromising about it with a mortgage surveyor! 😂).
I’ve had a lot of experience selling, moving, letting etc and I’m not a massive fan of estate agents. A lot of them are pushy arseholes who promise you the moon and the stars until you sign on the dotted line, and then they start to seriously take the piss - I’ve often wondered if there is a secret estate agent competition to see how many ways they can fuck up. Many I’ve dealt with are not the brightest sparks either… (don’t bother accusing me of being rude, I don’t care, and have the lived experience to back this opinion up!).
Sitting in your car for 45 minutes waiting for a prospective client (with a newborn) to come and find you isn’t exactly smart behaviour. Neither is telling someone (who your agency has just messed around with arranging an appointment at the wrong time) that you can’t re-arrange an appointment for a listing that you are seeking to get a contract for. If the Estate Agent is not pulling out all the stops right now, then they are not going to go that extra mile to get you the best offer after you sign the contract either. Tell them either they rearrange, or you’ll just book a valuation with someone else.
I see you are a first time buyer. You should both remember that you are the client. After a successful sale, you’ll be paying the estate agent a hefty percentage of the sale price. They should earn that by giving you an excellent and respectful service. You should never feel you have to accommodate mistakes that are the agency’s fault, particularly before they’ve even convinced you they are worth doing business with. Remember also to get at least three valuations, and interview the agent about what exactly they will do for you and how the house will be marketed. If it’s a relationship that’s going to work, you need to feel confident they will go that extra mile.
I completely understand why you wouldn’t want to let someone in to look around the house when you’re half dressed and the place is a mess. You’ve already been blindsided by a re-arranged appointment, and now you’re being asked to set aside your dignity too. It was an unreasonable ask, and I don’t see how anyone could argue otherwise. Despite the self-satisfied claims from some of the posters who’ve advocated they would just open the door and let him in - personal items and mess notwithstanding - most people would not be comfortable about doing this in reality.
And also the reality is, the initial valuation is often not a quick visit. Estate agents often use this first valuation contact to sit down and give you a hard sell, trying to get you to commit to them exclusively before they even leave the house. I’d either want to be in the right frame of mind to deal firmly with this, or expect my husband to be there too, especially if he wants to be involved in the decision of which agent to chose.
There’s also a bewildering amount of sympathy for the estate agent on this thread. Maybe I’m biased, but why?
The agency is looking for a commission and wants the Op’s business. The agency messed up the appointment. The agent himself might not have been at fault for that, but as his agency’s representative, he needs to take responsibility and find a solution that works for the client. Insisting the appointment needed to go ahead was wrong, and I can’t decide, to be honest, whether sitting in the car for 45 minutes, or standing on the doorstep for that time without knocking, is more stupid.
Don’t feel bad about not checking outside the door @PottyPet. Why should you check? You’ve enough on your plate without babysitting an estate agent (who wasn’t even standing there anyway, so you were right not to assume he was!). If he can’t figure out what to do (which, frankly, should have been to apologise profusely and re-arrange), then he’s not got enough initiative to sell your house either. He sounds like an idiot.
So, in summary, you are definitely not being unreasonable, and don’t let anyone tell you that you are. Your DP behaved like an arse and should be ashamed of the lack of respect he showed for you and the baby; his expectations of you tidying the house in a few minutes, prioritising this over your own dignity and the baby’s wellbeing, and accommodating the estate agent’s mistake were very unreasonable. And keep looking for an estate agent - this one doesn’t sound client-centred. 