Estate agent apathy and rudeness

[Nowanextraone]

Hi all,
We are house hunting. Just for the sake of not drip feeding we are relocating 5 hours away and are a cash buyer (not a millionaire cashbuyer 😬 but for a modest 3 bed house). We have very limited times we can get time off work and get up there to view houses.

Anyway, we are visiting the area next Friday/Saturday and today have called round estate agents to arrange some viewings.

We have been met with such rudeness, apathy and disinterest that I am honestly shocked. When we were selling our house, I'd have been mortified if potential buyers were shunned like we have been.

Basically of 6 houses we called up about, we have arranged just 2 viewings. Various reasons include:

• NO staff availability for viewing NEXT Friday and Saturday. This is the case for 2 of the houses.
• Vendor will do viewings if she 'has to' but doesn't want children going round the house (we have 3 children and no family to take the children whilst we are house hunting). EA said it's not worth him even asking the vendor as she can be 'funny', even though we are a potential cash buyer and she's been on the market for 6 months....
• 2 houses (that have been on the market for several months) are suddenly 'overwhelmed' by viewings and they'll call me back if they don't end in a sale...

I am suddenly worried we will never find a house!!!

Are EA typically this rude?!

I don’t know whether they are generally rude, but we are in the process of trying to sell our house and I’m finding our estate agent quite rude. All was fine until we signed their contract. Communication is poor, no viewings. We have asked for updates and the responses make me feel like I’ve asked a supermarket to sell my house instead of an estate agent. I might as well have stuck an ad in a newsagents window and tried to sell it myself.

Do you have an accent that marks you out as from a certain area? For example if you're moving to Cornwall or Scotland and you've got a London accent, I'd imagine they're not all going to give you a warm welcome because of the number of second home buyers. If you're not obviously from a certain area like that, I'd expect they've perhaps had enough of people from far away who book viewings then don't turn up for them.

We had this problem when we were trying to buy in Dublin from Belfast (we ended up not buying in Dublin in the end). They sort of shut down and ended up being quite unhelpful and in one case, outright rude. Several different estate agents did the same and we decided they just didn't want our money (we were cash buyers, too). Houses that had been on the market for months mysteriously had been sold (and yet continued being advertised on Myhome). I concluded the only thing it could be was my accent and the connotations of it.

The other alternative is they're genuinely booked up and short staffed. Is it possible to get some viewings on different days and rebook your travel to the new area accordingly?

I think EAs are having massive staff layoffs and we just aren't reading about it in the press yet, because to publicly admit it would be to admit house sales are on a downward spiral, and they are fierce deniers of this happening, probably to protect the remaining jobs.

Mmmmmm yes, we are moving from England to Wales due to my job. I wonder if this has anything to do with it. We definitely aren't buying a second home though and were clear it's to live in.
Maybe I should email instead.

That's interesting

I've encountered some that I would describe as difficult rather than rude

The most recent one, I contacted on the Tuesday when the house came on the market and asked for a viewing at the weekend. They said they would contact the vendors. Came back to me the next day to say they had no one available to do the viewing on Saturday (and don't do Sundays).

They booked me in for the following Saturday (didn't give me the option of viewing any sooner) then emailed late on the Friday evening to cancel the viewing saying an offer had been accepted on the house 🙄I suppose I don't know if it was the EA or the vendors messing me about, but it was very frustrating.

@Nowanextraone I would have to look up several charts from videos to be more accurate but it looks like sales figures by the end of the year are going to be down something like 300-400k on 2017 (the last non boom year they measure against) - there's no way that kind of fall happens without job losses.

Wouldn't that make them more interested in a buyer who is ready to go though?!

We now refuse to do viewings ourselves, after much experience of “buyers”. That’s what we pay the agent for. Certainly not apathy but practicality.

@Nowanextraone they won't have the manpower to service appointments and seemingly existing clients they have on their books. Level of motivation doesn't come into it.

They've already told you they can't accommodate you = we don't have the staff.

Which isn't something they will tell you.

Listings are down 30% so it's the only plausible explanation.

IME houses that are competitively priced and cause a flurry of interest can still sell really quickly. If 10 people have booked for viewings before you then, yes, there can be no staff availability on a Saturday to accompany you to a viewing.

I had this as a cash buyer 5yrs ago when relocating. On occasion, EAs didn't even turn up to viewings.

I laughed last year when one of them phoned me up to ask if I was still looking. They were a bit shocked when I said I'd bought for cash in their town 4yrs before!

I live in Wales (English with Welsh husband) and honestly can't believe it's anything to do with nationalism or not wanting the English. There's often a 'manana' attitude here unfortunately. Can you possibly come down for a weekend and visit EAs in person? Where are you looking at in Wales? Market is slow and EAs should be biting your hand off!

Almost every estate agency I have deal with has been like this. Difficult to rude but mostly difficult. Note I say estate agency rather than the individuals as some estate agents aren't too bad.

Gems include everything in the OP followed by...
The estate agents who don't turn up.
The estate agents who pointed me in the direction of their rental office round the corner before I spoke.
The estate agent who took me round a house and someone was asleep in bed. Naked.
The estate agent who was telling her bestie and my next door neighbour about the ins and outs of my sale and onward purchase.
The estate agents who could not sell my gorgeous, large, comepetively priced home for 12 months by which time we were due in the office to pull out. A buyer was magicked up that week.

Not to mention the terse phone calls, the lies. The whopper being that the sale would be able to complete in 5 months but a mortgage offer lower down was due to expire in 1 month. Leaving us homeless while awaiting a new build. We would not have accepted the sale.

you should document everything. you can seek redress through the Property redress scheme (ombudsman) the estate agent is legally forced to sign up to. You first have to make a formal complaint to the estate agent, go through their process, but if unhappy, you can use the PRS to address your complaint and they will look into it. It's free for tenants, buyers, sellers etc, anyone dealing with an estate agent. I had made a complaint about an EA in the past and was awarded £hundreds for their neglect of the property I was renting, even had the council involved. But you can also make complaints about poor communication etc.

They were all like this in the 1990s and early 2000s. Looks like that's the part of the cycle we're in now. There was a brief time in the middle when the ones I encountered were pleasant and professional but they all seem to have died out going by what friends and family and posters here are saying.

When I viewed my house I was a couple of minutes late, as I couldn't find anywhere to park. There were 2 parking spaces allocated to the house I was viewing but the woman from the estate agents, who was waiting to show me round, had selfishly parked in the middle of both of them. She then had the nerve to stand in the doorway tapping her watch and glaring at me. She had no interest in selling the house and rushed me through. I viewed it again a couple of months later and, this time, was shown around by the estate agents owner's mother. This was a totally different experience and I immediately put an offer in. When I was selling my previous house, I had some children accompanying their parents on a viewing who behaved really badly. They broke my conservatory blinds, touched ornaments and dived on beds. It put me off allowing children at viewings, but I was desperate to sell my house, so decided to still allow them but tell their parents at the door to supervise them at all times (and was prepared to ask them to leave if necessary). Decent parents understood and didn't take offence.

@Charlattanus23 argh, it's going to be a nightmare when we come to buy, isn't it? Can't wait!

Anecdotally, back in April or May, we were trying for four days to get booked in on a Saturday (five hour round trip to viewings, couldn't just drop in) and the only way we were able to get hold of the EA after four messages was to call their head office, who put us straight through.

Thank you, this makes me feel so much better. We are looking I'm Carmarthenshire. I have been offered a new job

I don't think they've been rude, but they haven't been accommodating.Good luck with your house search.

Thank you.

Some have definitely been rude. Am example was when I said we were a cash buyer, the woman snapped
'There is a difference between having cash in the bank and cash tied into a house sale'.
Errrrr no shit sherlock. My cash is sat in a bank!
She was soooo rude

@Nowanextraone I suggest you start sending these EAs your bank statement (with your account no. and sort code blacked out) to show them you have the funds.

A lot of people seem to tell EAs they are cash buyers only to then be found out that they have properties to sell and have wasted time.

The more organised and proceedable and keen you are, the more likely you are to get the result you want.

Sounds likely, that would explain the bad mood, many younger EA`s probably thought the last few years were "normal"?

Thats right, many of them will be jumping to other jobs if they can get them and wont be much interested in being polite to complete strangers who might or might not make them some commission, personally I would just try to get the information I need from the person and ignore their rudeness or whatever attitude they present, certainly don`t waste energy arguing with them and making complaints.

I'm currently selling and my EA has been really good. Surprisingly good.

I did pick the ones with the biggest fees though!