A plea to Rightmove and all estate agents (and vendors) - do your job properly!

[fourwalls]

Oh the wasted hours phoning and emailing estate agents to find out what should have been included the listing details as a simple matter of course.

It surely cannot be difficult for Rightmove to INSIST that estate agents complete the following COMPULSORY fields when listing properties.

This really bugs me with flats especially:

1. What floor is it on? 1st, 2nd, top, basement etc. How can you forget to include that?

1. Length of lease and service charge. I've owned flats - everybody knows how long their lease is - don't bullshit me - don't list the flat until you know. EAs - how on God's earth can you claim to give an accurate valuation of a flat when you tell me the owner hasn't 'confirmed' the length of lease? (which usually means it needs extending) HOW?

1. Off street parking - it either has it or it doesn't - state it clearly.

1. Central Heating - why do I have to peer into your tiny blurred photos to check if there are radiators on the walls - JUST TELL ME!!! in the frickin' details. Tick the fffing box!

1. You list a flat with no fffing photo! WTF! Why? Do you really have so much spare time on your hands that you can have me ringing up to go, I'm looking on Street View, which building is it? By the way, what floor is it on? Oh, no thanks. If you THINK, for a moment that it gets me on your database, think again, it makes me think of you as an incompetent knob.

How can you list a flat if you haven't been there? How did you get a signed agreement? How do you even know the place exists? Did you have your camera/phone with you? Take a photo and put it up - don't be a knob. Get a still image from Google FFS. Otherwise, I'll conclude the place must look like a crack den and that you're a knob.

And finally, VENDORS why the fuck do you employ agents who sell your houses like this?

Anyone else got any pet bugbears?

I would automatically discount any property that doesn't have photos. Yes it probably is a crack den.

The other side of course is viewers who say the house is too small - when the rooms and sizes were on the details!

Ooooooh can I add letting agents who say

'We've got loads of people ready and willing to move in'

and then only show people around in the first week, and when I chase for an update give them a bollocking they say

'It's very quiet as it's the summer holidays. Maybe you could drop the rent by nearly 20% to get more people in?'

Why did you value it at the higher price? Why did you tell me you had lots of people looking? Why am I told by friends that there are a glut of people wanting to rent at the moment and you haven't shown anyone around for 3 weeks?

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

I'm looking at estate agents at the moment with a view to putting our house on the market. What else specific to houses do I need to make sure they do?

The slackness of some EAs in checking basic details on their marketing literature never fails to amaze me - for example, a house being marketed by the rather grand EAs Cheffins which, according to the floor plan, appears to have no door into the sitting room: www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-35521705.html

When I sold my house last year, the first draft of the details had completely wrong information about how far the house was from the town centre and the train station (one of the main selling points in a commuter town). The EAs office was 5 minutes' away, so its not as if they wouldn't have known this.

If you're selling a house or flat, go over the draft brochure details carefully, and assume that you're going to find lots of errors.

Ah, I'm a proofreader by day so will enjoy doing this

Also make sure the EA and those negotiating on your property VISIT your property and make sure they are familar with it. We recently had the experience of a negotiator trying to sell ours without any understanding or concept of what the property was like/located etc. Dont get me started, in my opnion, in this 'digital age' they have to to very little for their money, they never follow up/make suggestions/read their own literature and they earn a fortune for doing the bare minimum. I have worked for an EA so have some experience. Their 'profession' should be reviewed by a public comission, they have a lot of explaining to do re the current housing crisis.

commission

Being rigorous with the draft details is essential - I agree.

DON'T let them post 'awaiting approval' details on Rightmove - how dare they do this anyway!

Last week I saw a 1 bedroom flat advertised, Oh, I though , great clued up agent has included a floorplan - there were TWO bedrooms on the floorplan.

What should a buyer conclude - It's a 1 bed with the wrong floorplan or it's a 2 bed with the wrong description.

Either way I conclude EA= knob and Vendor = knob.

If I wanted to buy that I'd have my bullshit shield and my anti-bollocks forcefield activated in all my dealings with both EA, vendor and vendor's solicitor because what that shows me and other buyers is that they fundamentally don't give a fuck - if you can't even get the number of bedrroms right!!!

I don't think vendors have the remotest idea of how many people just click right on by this sort of shit on Rightmove.

It's like, you must have bought the house at some point - do you ever look at details yourself - do you know what buying a house involves - are you a moron?

I wonder if agents are allowed by vendors to be so shit because the vendors generally aren't paying a cent up front, unless you use Housenetwork or similar (where the details are generally a LOT better).

I think if vendors paid something upfront they would damn well make sure they got better service and the agents might stop swivelling on their fingers.

I think the issue is that the EAs have had it good for so long, they have forgotton how to give a 'service',we had dealings with three agencies, one very swanky image conscious yet totally useless ( never checked anything, never phoned back after viewings, had no idea of how to improve/upgrade things), one national chain ( photos were dreadful, communication slow and impersonal) and the little RICS office which was infinitely better service, knowledgeable, and thorough. Someone who knows their market, isnt going to over value and give you false hopes ( so that ultimately their fee is bigger) - the whole process brings out the worse in everyone, basically because it is about money, it is impersonal (you have to go through a third party) and there is no empathy - everyone has an eye on their fee or how to do someone down.

I hate it when flats are wrongly described as houses and therefore appear in my search for houses.

Also agents who ignore your criteria. We once had a delightful experience with Foxtons a few years ago, we had told them that our absolute upper limit for rent was £1300 per month. They showed us a lovely house, we ooohed and aahed and got really excited, then asked how much it was and the EA said £1600. We got annoyed and he took us off to the next viewing. At the front door I asked how much that was, and he looked at the paper and said 'oh, £1600'. He couldn't explain why it had happened so we rang the office and fumed at them, and were told airily 'oh yes, well we always find that whenever people give us a budget they're always prepared to go x% over, so we always show them more expensive places'.

WTF? I told you that was my absolute max. I'm not stupid, we know our budget, we carefully worked it out. We are NOT prepared to go over it. You asked for max, I gave you max, what part of MAXIMUM do you not understand? We found lots of lovely places within budget with another agent so it's their loss for being stupid.

foxtons!

If I see someone is selling their house through Foxtons I wouldnt touch it with a barge pole no matter how much I liked the house.

For a start it will be incrediably over priced. Foxtons are a nightmare to deal with.

I can't understand why vendors would be so relaxed about crap EAs though. We want to sell our house asap for as much as we can so it's not in our interest to sit with our finger up our arse while the EA does bugger all. Trust me, the EA/s we choose will be made to earn their X%.

By time we sold our old house we went through 3 ea's Quenelle!

All awful in their own special way

Oh. Not what I want to hear Schoolworries

Ah well, judging by what I read here, I suspect there is little or no equity in the house so it might be a short conversation I have with them anyway.

I would take what they say with a pinch of salt. Some of them tell you anything you want to hear, (one overvalued ours by 80k!) to get you on the books.

Some even undervalue knowing its a guaranteed quick sale.

I would do some online research to check what the latest sold prices are in your area.

Thanks Schoolworries. Going by latest sold prices we'd be ok but it takes a few months for them to be available, by which time are they out of date?

I certainly don't want to waste buyers' time, or ours, by trying to sell an overvalued house.

Two houses for sale in my road at the moment.
The EA jumbled the internal and external pictures - and put the wrong sign board on the wrong house !
Our catchment school is dire - so the EAs have lied about which catchment we are in!
The room measurements are "interesting" - bearing in mind one of the houses is the other half of my semi!

PS
DO NOT always trust sold prices - the list of exclusions in the Land Registry data means that the averages are overstated by a fair bit (resposession sales excluded for a start)