Estate agent wants to "substantiate" our offer before passing it to the vendor- WTF is going on here?

[JessieMcJessie]

DH and I made an offer on a house yesterday; I put it to the EA in writing by email this morning. No response till about 5 pm when some "senior negotiator" at the agent calls me to tell me that this particular agent has what he described as a "trademark process" of ensuring that buyers can " substantiate" an offer before passing it to the vendor. I am to expect a call from his colleague tomorrow who just happens to be an independent mortgage broker.

We already have an agreement in principle via London and Country for way more than the amount we need to borrow, and are putting in a 50% deposit. We are chain free. I told the tosspot this but he said that his mate would need to ask me some more questions.

It's a scam on two fronts isn't it? First, get some bloke to ask me a load of financial questions to work out how much more we have to spend and force us to up our offer. Second to drum up business for their broker.

Can I just tell him to fuck off and remind him that they are legally obliged to pass on the offer to the vendor? Perhaps send him a pic of my parents' grave to prove the source of the deposit?

Has anyone else come across this?

Oh and to cap it all, just before he put down the phone he said "Ciao".

Stick to your guns, tell them you will provide a cope of your mortgage offer once your offer and been accepted and remind them they have to pass on your offer by law.

I'd also tell them you have no intention of passing on personal detailed evidence of your finances to some random estate agency. That info will be shared only with your own mortgage broker.

As others have said, remind them of the law and have they passed your offer on yet?!

You will have to provide all those details to the solicitor/conveyancer though, they want to know where the money came from so brace yourself for that. It's down to money laundering regs. If it's an inheritance they may want a letter from the executor or a copy of the will and probate if YOU are the executors (that was our experience, anyway!).

Good luck with the offer.

They are generating themselves commission via referrals - blatant

I had to do this recently (Jordan Fishwick). I just took the call and was very firm that we didn't need any further advice and we knew what we were doing with our mortgage. They are looking for people who are vague about their mortgage situation to then try and sell their services. It's a 5 minute call and if it means you can proceed with things then I'd just do it.

Thanks all. We've asked our mortgage broker for his views too.

This happened to us. Our own mortgage broker phoned them and they denied saying it. They are trying it on. I would write to the vendors directly and tell them you have made an offer.

We sold our flat with KFH in 2009. The financial adviser STILL phones me and sends us Christmas cards.

Are you buying a property with lots of interest? We had this situation and whilst our offer was the highest the vendor had asked for balanced offers (I. E good offers from people who can proceed and have finance in place).The call was only a few minutes to ascertain that our mortgage requirements were not crazy, good salary multiples etc.We didn't disclose salaries just said the deposit amount and where it came from and required mortgage. It then became obvious we wouldn't have had an issue with getting the finance but some people might.

We had the same when we put offers in through KFH and Dexters. Dexters were particularly bad and wanted to see actual bank statements proving the source of the deposit, at which point we withdrew our offer.

We sold through KFH and they included this 'service' in their sales patter, although we didn't actually get told whether we received any 'unsubstantiated' offers.

It smacked off scam to me as well so I was very wary. The attitude we got from Dexters was the final nail in the coffin of ever wanting to deal with them again. They were absolutely dreadful.

Re; Poster's who had a insurance took out by FA.

Nothing to do with the EA regulator. This is fraud. Report to the compnay providing the insurance and the FSA.

An EA is correct in asking for proof.
The EA may try and spin the process to feed business to their tame FA.

How intrusive the questions and evidence of proof is another question. A lot of chains are fallign through due to MMR and banks no longer accepting liar salaries.

If the sellers are living in the house i would post your offer through the door, explaining what the agents are doing.

Saucy, the EA may have told to vet the buyers.

We got asked to do this. I didn't feel particularly comfortable but they had us over a barrel. I can see both sides because it feels a bit odd that anyone can go viewing a property without any means of buying it, but it's very convenient for the agent who gets too much info about your finances.

I can't comment on the mortgage broker thing but I do know that whilst an EA is obliged to pass on an offer s/he is also almost always instructed by the vendor to find out who is actually able to go ahead.

An Open House in London near a good school will produce 20 offers within a week. Everyone says they can afford it/ have a buyer for their own/ has a mortgage in place etc. Everyone.

If the vendor accepts an offer, legally the the other buyers have to be told - they then go elsewhere. The buyer then discovers he can't quite manage it yet ... and everyone loses.

I expect the EA has told the vendor that you have offered, (it only reflects well on the EA that you have), and the vendor has more than likely asked him to find out how "good" you are. That's why the vendor has employed him; to get the best/strongest/quickest/highest offer.

Good luck with the purchase

Thanks BlueJug. Agree with what you say and have no problem giving substantiation info before property is taken off market, or even before vendor giving any feedback at all about our offer.

However the agent has been crystal clear that the vendor will not be told about our offer until we can produce an Agreement in Principle from a lender. We have a document called "Decision in Principle" from our broker (who got it for us specifically for the purpose of showing agents when making offers) but that's not good enough, apparently.

Funnily enough the EA's broker has been on today saying that we should go with him as our broker is clearly too slow and we don't want to miss out on the house now, do we? Tossers.

Have you put a note through the door of the house for the vendors? I would be livid if I wasn't advised of your offer.

OK that sounds bad As pp's said - a note through the door then?

It is a stressful business

I'd just do it. I've bought 2 houses and sold 1. When buying we saw several brokers each time, even though we already had deals in place and we never found a better offer. I knew they only wanted us through the door to meet targets etc but tbh I just wanted to keep the EA onside.

When selling our EA told us they vet everyone before they let them offer and I was happy with that as we'd already had an offer accepted on a house we really didn't want to lose BEFORE we went on the market so couldn't really risk an unsubstantiated offer at that point.

We had this - totally par for the course in London now, it's a way 1) of weeding out a few of the 300 offers they get on everything and 2) drumming up business for their in-house mortgage brokers.