Estate agent lying

[TheAmusedTealHare]

Hi,

I’ve been interested in a property for a few years now. I’m not going to say where it is but everything else is the same.

1 year ago the estate agent came to me and said it was coming on to the market at £1.5m. Was I interested. I did the maths and my thought was that it wasn’t worth anymore than £800,000. I put in an offer of £800,000. It was rejected. As I expected.

since then it has come down in price and now it is on the market as advertised as offers over £900,000. I went back to the estate agent and they told me that even though it was advertised as offers over £900,000 the seller wouldn’t accept anything under £1.3m.

is that legal to advertise “offers over £900,000” but not accept anything under £1.3m?

The agent is obliged to forward all offers to the vendor UNLESS they have been instructed not to eg no offers below £x

You can always pop your offer through the vendors door

I wouldn’t even trust an estate agent to forward all offers. We have been stitched up and lost properties we wanted twice because of dodgy dealings by estate agents.

Yes totally legal, but a shortsighted way of marketing as it's targeting the wrong people. I viewed and offered on something that was offers over £750K, turns out the vendor wanted a min of £1.2. On this occasion i think it was with the only agent that would take it on as she said to me " sigh, in his head he wants xxx". I won't have been the only one to offer what it was worth! £800ish. It sold two years later for £850k

Yours will eventually sell, but for what it's worth and not what they think they want. Stay close to it and ready and waiting.

It sounds more like a professional standards / regulatory issue than anything else and the EA’s complaints procedures / escalation to the relevant regulatory bodies would be the route for addressing it. I don’t think it’s “illegal” in the sense people usually use that word. But it’s highly unlikely you’d gain much from trying to complain, frankly, if your aim is to see if there is a price that is mutually acceptable. Ultimately the vendor is or is not open to offers within the bracket of what you are willing to pay. Having the EA put the OIEO figure up won’t change whether there is a figure you and the vendor could agree on.