House left on Rightmove despite being withdrawn?

[PastMyBestBeforeDate]

If a sale has fallen through and the house has been taken off the market, do estate agents sometimes leave it up on Rightmove as advertising? Or if the sale has completed, do they do this?

Yes, in the latter case - two local agents here leave all their properties available on RM despite them having sold. It meant I didn't bother ringing them again to book viewings after a couple of times where they said "oh that's sold, we just haven't updated the listing". A strange way to do business IMHO but that's estate agents for you.

It's possibly because there were so few houses on the market, but I didn't appreciate having my time wasted.

Very annoying dubya. In both these cases they're still showing as SSTC or Under Offer so hopefully it's not wasting people's time.

We have found this on several occasions. My DH actually outright asked them, why is it still up if it's SSTC? They said basically, it's in case the sale falls through, then they have a list of interested parties already lined up that they can call straight away and get in to view. Instead of taking the time to get it relisted and then having to wait for people to contact them.

There is one very popular national agent that seems to do this as standard. It’s incredibly annoying.

I think there are rules about estate agents removing houses when sold.

Some of our local ones are clearly leaving properties on for months after completion.

I thought that leaving properties on as SSTC was a way of the estate agents demonstrating a successful sale? So more of a marketing ploy.

I can understand keeping SSTC on during the selling process as you don’t know whether the sale will fall though and it will have to be relisted. But if it’s been withdrawn I can only assume it’s a way boosting the EA’s stats, and perhaps encouraging would be buyers to make contact, so they can sell on a similar property.

That's what I'm wondering Magic. There's one that's been SSTC for ages and ages and then there's one that is rumoured to have fallen through but is still SSTC.

Dexters do this on purpose and it’s very annoying. I think it’s so that more people phone them and while you’re asking about one property (that’s already sold) they are trying to get you to view others they have on their books 🙄

When I bought my house I had to email and ask for the listing to be taken down, even after I had moved in. I think they would have left it up there for ages if I hadn’t. (Marked as SSC.)