Estate agents - just need to vent a tiny bit

[StiffyByng]

We put our house on the market a while back and no one wants it. Very quiet market, house is a bit quirky, not astonished, we'll live.

BUT as ever I have just been irritated beyond belief by the estate agents. We went with our lot because they seemed fairly realistic about it on the whole, but even they went with glowing praise about its great decor, amazing kitchen, garden, yada yada.

Every viewing we've had feedback on some aspect of the house and along the way it's now become accepted wisdom with them that the house has many flaws, most of them nothing we can address (see quirky), but some of them in direct contradiction to the benefits they identified when they valued it which they're now saying are issues we might need to address.

I just want an estate agent to offer a properly honest opinion when they value it, especially in a tricky market, so you have some shot of pricing it right to take the issues into account and even sorting some things out in advance. Instead you just get timewasting flannel, and then a long drip drip of 'well, it IS a tricky garden' which wears away at your very soul.

We've taken it off today - were planning to do so after one last viewing - and the feedback was 'a definite no, given the amount of work that needs doing, as they're expecting a baby'. A few weeks ago we were told our house (much extended/fiddled with) was in great condition with everything that could be done to it already done. The passage of time has been cruel to my house over the last two months clearly! The year I spent getting to know my builders and their family was for nothing it seems.

Surely it’s the viewers, not the EAs who are contradicting each other? No surprise as one person’s dream house might be another’s full gut and Reno job. I always think sending feedback after a viewing is pointless, for the very reason you highlight. Tee don’t make an offer because the house is not right for us. I’m sure yours will be right for someone.

Do you feel comfortable posting the listing here so we can see it? Maybe there’s something that can be done, or maybe it’s not actually that bad for the price. What sort of things are the agents suggesting you sort?

I agree that the viewers here are ‘complaining’ and not the EA

But, as always, it’ll be the price.

I understand your pain. We decided to put ours in the market in December, got three agents to quote, 100k difference between top and bottom quote, third fairly in the middle.

We liked the feel of the top quoting agent but told them their price was stupidly high and they need to lower it considerably, we're not fooled by his price. Nah nah, he's got loads of clients, hell get the top price etc etc. We shouldn't have gone with them.

2 months go by and the feedback is it's too high a price. It was a terrace townhouse but they're flogging it to people who can afford semi detached houses, completely the wrong market. Eventually they get it to the price we wanted to originally quote it at, and we finally got an offer.

Then they gave pretty much radio silence during the 6 month process for the sale to complete. Whereas the agent for the seller of the house we bought kept the 7 property chain together and without him it would never have happened. And at the end of it we had to pay almost 10k in fees to our agent, for pretty much nothing.

How many estate agents did you get in to look at marketing it?

Would you be prepared to post a link so people can maybe help advise ?

I know it's the viewers who are giving feedback but the agents are now taking it all as the big issues with our house - things that they could really have pointed out/picked up on when valuing it given that they're meant to have some level of expertise. Eg the house is on a hillside so the garden is too, and a few people have said it wouldn't suit them. I can quite see why, but the agents originally said what a great sized garden it was, multi-functional, not over-looked etc. And now they're sending us emails saying 'they're not offering owing to the garden situation'. So I would far rather they had said that the garden, while nice in its own way and fine for many, would put quite a few people off. Etc. Etc.

I am comfortable with the idea that the house is flawed. It won't suit everyone - no house does! I just want LESS talking up that immediately turns into unthinking endorsement of every pointless bit of feedback, so we have a realistic view of how saleable our house is.

My favourite pointless bit of feedback (not the agents on this one obviously) so far was the email setting out that one viewer 'would need to change the downstairs bathroom, do an extra side-return, remodel the garden and move some internal walls'. Which rather suggested to me he just needed a different house!

@blinkthreetimes

I agree that the viewers here are ‘complaining’ and not the EA

But, as always, it’ll be the price.

It's totally overpriced! We've taken it off sale as the reason we wanted to move now has changed, and the market is dire, so it's not the time to be selling it.

I'm not sure how much more I could have done to tell them (four agents) that we wanted a REALISTIC price. And they all came in around the same price more or less, other than one, who was less, but suggested that as a way of generating above asking price offers to take it back up to where the others were.

I totally understand what you are saying. We are trying to sell my Dads flat in London and it’s really old fashioned. All the agents who viewed it said it was absolutely charming and the condition wouldn’t bother buyers one bit. Their valuations were sky high and we chose a valuation in the middle and even then I felt it was too high.
A few weeks on and we have no offers and the estate agents say it is “because of the condition as the flat is basically a renovation project”. I don’t disagree but that is totally not what they said when they were trying to get our business. They really do change their tune when if they had just acknowledged that the flat was dated and that would affect the price it would have saved time.

That's exactly it, Twiglets!

I think I was just stung this evening by an email just referring in passing to our house needing a lot of work as if we were all agreed it is some sort of renovation project, rather than the well decorated, modern, extended house they told us it was a few weeks ago.

I had vastly differing variations in EAs' valuations. The bungalow sold for a lot less than it had been valued.

It would help if they would provide realistic valuations - no-one benefits from the inflated ones.

They are bullshitters unfortunately!

I think you have to be very honest with yourselves when selling - you get to set the price after all.

Surely if you think the EA have overestimated the value of your property you just instruct them to list it at a lower price.

@MadgeMak

Surely if you think the EA have overestimated the value of your property you just instruct them to list it at a lower price.

We asked them to reduce it by quite a bit, but they psyched us out with lots of talk about going too low, market being very strange etc. And tbh even at that point we were in two minds about selling so we went along with 'seeing what happened' rather than fighting it. We have friends in exactly the same position, with an agent we decided against, who had to argue for a week with their agent to reduce their price. They've also now taken their house off the market.

So, sorry, we did reduce the price, but less than we'd thought would be sensible. If we were keener to sell, I would have insisted though. We'd still have wasted precious weeks at the wrong price if we were desperate to move, all for a pittance extra in their commission.

Post it on here! I'm looking to buy and struggling!

What part of the country are you in OP?
I'm in Scotland and everything is still flying out the door for silly money.
Saying that, I agree that estate agents are horrendous. I have a local one who do absolutely nothing, for either the seller or the buyer. I got to the point last year where I refused to look at any properties they had because I couldnt cope with their incompetencies.

It's London. No one wants to buy in London, especially not lovely incredibly flawed houses like mine.

That's another reason for taking it off really. It may be that when lots of people are forced back into offices next year, they might be more interested in London again.

I agree with other posters that it's the viewers not the EA. We had some saying garden was lovely, some saying garden too small, some saying house in good condition and others saying needed a ton of work. It was frustrating but that's viewers for you. And of course, they're the ones you're trying to sell to, so their opinion does matter - the EA knows that.

Regarding you being annoyed at the price... itbis entirely up to you what you market your own house for. You said they 'psyched' you out? It really is up to up though. And it's odd if they weren't happy with you reducing it- often, a high valuation is a strategy to get business, and then it's often thr EA that suggests reducing it (a small reduction doesn't make much difference to their percentage cut - it's the sale they're after).

I'm very inyrigued by a quirky London house. How refreshing! The vast majority if London housing stock is the Victorian terrace with totally predictable layout/floorplan.

As I said, we weren't too fussed about the reduction as we were already thinking of taking it off the market at that point, and were more curious to see if it made a difference than anything else. The initial price though was a big thing, and we were entirely guided by agents who assured us they were pricing it realistically, which clearly they weren't. We're not experts at house pricing - we can make a bash but we don't know the subtleties of the local market and what people look for when they buy houses around our area in the same way.

I know viewers are all bonkers, including us in our time of course. I wouldn't mind it if it were a random collection of comments. Some of them have been all over the place, but others are forming themes, and it's those that bother me, because estate agents are meant to understand the stuff that people want or don't want in the local market. And price accordingly if they mean people are going to be less keen on your house! So not value the house and tell you how great a feature is, and then shortly afterwards start telling you that feature is not what anyone wants. Just be honest from the start and not make you feel like a grabby git when all you want to do is sell your house.

The reduction thing is weird, as previously I've had agents suggest it themselves, whereas this lot had to be chased on it. But as my friends had a similar experience in the same area, I wonder if there's some weird dynamic going on where agents are worrying that lots of price reductions creates some sort of spiral. I have no idea - I know nothing about it.

@Chicchicchicchiclana it's not that exciting. Or rather, it's potentially enormously exciting to a very small number of people who probably won't come along, but for the majority of people looking to buy a house, it's inconvenient. But for the most part it is a variant on the dull old Victorian (William IV in fact) house I'm sorry to say! We like it and our friends have been very surprised it wasn't snapped up, so it's not too awful.

All this tells you is what everyone already knows. That anyone can put on a suite and become an estate agent. In this country they don’t need to be qualified. Anyone can go on rightmove and value a house with a bit of calculated guesswork. Seriously, you are placing too much emphasis on the EA. They guess, and this time they guessed the price wrong. Lower the price and the house will sell.

I've recently sold a quirky house. We found most of the local estate agents were upping the market price to make us go with them for the fee.
We pulled it off the market readvertised it with a 3rd(!) estate agent at what we thought the appropriate price was (much lower than the EA) and it's sold within 3 days and 4.5 months later we exchanged.

Look at the market yourself if you know your home is not popular and the local prices for poplar houses are all £x check that your house is not too expensive in comparison else it may never sell unless that one person walks in a loves it in which case if you believe that may happen you have to have the time. It's your choice what you sell it for. Also we found EA gave up actively selling our house so you have to move on when that happens else they'll fob you off into eternity as it's easy enough for them to just leave your house on RM forever just in case.

Thing is that we DIDN’T know the right price - that’s what we needed the agents to advise us on, and why we were extremely clear that we wanted something realistic not inflated. The ones we went with promised they were sensible and not Foxtons-style types and that the valuations had all come back similar because that was the obvious price to put the house on.

It’s clearly overpriced and we could see that quite quickly but we didn’t know before we listed it. By which point its various faults, none of which surprised us, were being cited when they weren’t mentioned as an issue during the valuation.

You can’t just guess via Rightmove as if I had frankly I’d have gone for a similar price to what we did. In fact one of the reasons I went for their price was that it looked on the sensible side to the comparators. But I don’t spend time every day with people wanting to buy houses in my area getting an understanding of what their priorities are - the sort of thing an agent might have some insight on and use in a valuation.

It might be that the market is so slow at the moment that almost nothing is selling. I can see what appear to be lovely houses locally reducing their prices which I would snap up as a buyer.

I guess with the feedback we probably all get fed up with constant drip drip of negativity about houses we’ve lived in happily. Maybe an agent that didn’t just report every comment back without any editorial would be helpful! I’ve had ones before that at least make it clear they think the viewers had an odd take - eg the one who said the garden to my flat was ‘too big’ - it was a 20ft patio and lawn thing.

This is strange: property was flying out the window in London over the last year, with prices rocketing .

I think the thing with ‘quirky’ is that however cheap if people don’t get on with the quirks they won’t go for it, they will make some other compromise, like move further out.

For quirky it is waiting for the quirky buyer who appreciates it.

What did you like about it when you bought?

My whole area is dead, and has been for a few months now. So we're an exception clearly. I was told by an agent in a different part of the country that London has the softest market at the moment.

I'm quite at peace with the fact that the appeal will be more limited. I'm not complaining that we didn't sell. I'm irritated with the agents' inability to offer a realistic valuation.

I'm probably also overstating the quirkiness of it. It only boils down to two things - garden on a slope with some terracing, so won't suit everyone, and an architectural quirk which means you can't do a loft conversion, which apparently everyone does. Neither of which was an issue with me.