Estate Agent is a liar!

[dejavuaswell]

Yesterday morning I spoke to an agent about a house currently on offer at £550K (previously £580K). I asked him what would the vendors include in the way of carpets and curtains if I made an offer of £520K. He said that he would find out.

Mid afternoon he phoned back telling me had he had worked all day putting a chain together based on my offer. Adding as an afterthought that I would need to up my offer by £10K.

Err, what offer? After a short but frank exchange of views he said he would need to tell the other people involved that "the chain had broken" So his chain was based on me raising an offer that I had never made!

All in a days work for an estate agent! Tell him you didn't know there was an onward chain and now that is the case you're not interested for a penny more than 500k, and it's his fault for not disclosing all the relevent information.

Lying is their default setting. I think there's some sort of test that they have to pass.

Did you say to him "Did you misunderstand me? Why did you go to all that trouble when I haven't actually made an offer?".

I certainly wouldn't have gone to that sort of trouble if I didn't have a firm offer on the table, when I worked as an Estate Agent. And no, I never lied to anyone either. And I was good at my job and sold lots of houses.

Can we have less of the lazy sweeping generalisations, please.

That is awful, sounds like a tactic to make you feel guilty and pressure you into making the offer (by the way do people really take carpets with them). Of course all EA are not the same, but I have been left with a bad impression by quite a few.

Do you want the house or not?

Normally people would not discuss carpets (99% left in a property) or curtains until they make an offer. They are simple folk these agents and you strayed from the normal process!

£10k more not that different - say you will do £5k more if curtains, appliances etc.. are included.

Did you say to him "Did you misunderstand me? Why did you go to all that trouble when I haven't actually made an offer?".

The only offer I have made for the house was for £497K. I don't see how what I said could have been taken as a formal offer. To construct a chain based on a further increase to this (non) offer was bizarre!

"Do people really take the carpets with them?" Oh yes. our vendors took the carpets. and the curtains. and the cooker. and the loo roll holder, the bathroom cabinet, the light bulbs and the thingys that keep the lightshades on the pendant fittings. And they left the house filthy. So yes, people really do take all that stuff. Oh. and we'd agreed to their asking price. bastards.

we made an appointment to view some place once and they changed the board to sold

god I wish our vendor would take the carpets! They are disgusting - factoring in how soon we can get rid is one of my biggest worries!

When we put our offer in, the EA wanted lot's of details, including mortgage broker name and number. I actually felt put out that he didn't trust that the finances were not in place!!

Estate agents go to a special type of 'school for wankers'. I want to literally kill with my own bare hands the ones I am having the misfortune to deal with.

Arsewipes

Aah now if you've already offered, that changes things slightly. I can sort of see what happened.

And I've just bought a house. With one exception, the estate agents were utterly lovely. One of them in particular went above and beyond what was expected of her. And she was nothing but honest. She even texted me when she was on holiday during the buying process to check in. She collated info on schools and all sorts for us.

So some of them are v nice indeed.

we're just about to complete and all the estate agents have been fine. One was lovely and a bit useless, one was lovely and very efficient.

However I must admit that I wish our estate agent had been a bit more suspicious because our buyers, though very nice, turned out NOT to have all their finance in place, despite what they'd said.

So I don't blame myboys' EA at all. In fact I wish mine had taken a leaf from his book!

Why do you care about the carpets and curtains on a house you haven't even offered on?

What is the problem with your EA tiredemma?

namey- very long story, in a nutshell-

We had a second viewing on a house. The EA at that viewing blatantly lied, telling us that the vendor had 'found somewhere to live' was 'good to go' and 'hoping for a quicksale'.
We knew that there was other interest in the house so we put in an offer just under asking price, sold our house much lower than originally planned as our purchasers were cash buyers and we didnt want to lose the house we had fell in love with. This was late July.

The vendor wasnt 'good to go' at all- in fact he only found somewhere to live a couple weeks ago. We are fortunate that the people who purchased our house allowed us to stay in as tenants.

My cousin used to be an estate agent and has told me all sorts of crap that EA's get up to to sell houses. I have very little trust in them.