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 think estate agents can be very rude - will never forget going in to get deals of houses when I was first time buyer. I had a good salary - ample for the deposit - I was wearing casual clothes, patchwork jeans and probably looked a few years younger than I was. Went into one estate agents in the town I lived and he told me to come back when I had the money to look. I walked out and never went back there, I didn't say anything partly because I couldn't quite believe it and did feel rather intimidated. Oddly enough that estate agents is still going strong as a family business

Do you know what I'd be inclined to do? I'd write letters, addressed to 'the present owner' of each of the homes the agents won't help you with, and tell the owners that you are visiting the area on X date, you are relocating due to work and would love to be able to view their property if they are available. Say that you tried to arrange a viewing via their agent, but they are too busy to fit you in. Tell them that you are cash buyers with money in the bank, can proceed quickly, and you are not in a chain. Give them your contact details and see what happens.

I think kievlovertwo is right in that they lack capacity. We’re selling at the minute and our branch has seen a lot of people go in the time we’ve been selling. I don’t know if they are making redundancies yet or people are just escaping a bad environment. Dealing with other estate agents in the chain though and it doesn’t seem much better in those offices either. They seem to be fighting fires constantly - basically the more pissed off you are, the more urgently you’re dealt with but everyone else gets pissed off while they’re trying to deal with that.

Apparently conditional selling is on the rise. This is where EAs favour putting forward offers from buyers using their own recommended conveyancers, mortgage brokers and surveyors.

@Nowanextraone this could mean you are at a disadvantage because you don't need a mortgage so won't earn them that commission.

https://thenegotiator.co.uk/trading-standards-boss-says-hes-powerless-to-stop-eyewatering-referral-fees/

https://www.estateagenttoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2023/9/agencies-favouring-lower-offers-to-get-referral-fees--claim?source=newsticker

Wow, that's interesting. And worrying!

I'm a cash buyer too, and wonder if this is why my request was delayed and then cancelled. Unfortunately I'm not local to my search area, so I can't just pop around and put a note through the vendor's door.

@Mooserp I listen to a weekly EA statistics show and they've openly discussed how these referral services (along with having a strong rental arm) is the only way to keep the wolf from the door during a housing market decline.

It's certainly not the first time I've heard of EAs strong-arming buyers into using their services, but it's worrying that it's on the rise.

Perhaps write a letter to the vendor?

@Nowanextraone I think @fiddlesticksandotherwords suggestion of writing to the vendor: re 'am in the area, I really want to see your house' is a good one. Most vendors will be absolutely clueless at what's being turned down.

Some people quite rightly only want their EA to do viewings, but I bet if they knew the number of people who had been turned down because the agency have no staff to facilitate a viewing, they'd soon change their mind and show people around themselves.

That's right. Most of them will probably be too young to have ever seen or ever had to deal with a housing market decline.

I don't understand why UK agents don't do open houses. They do where I live and it's great. They are almost always on Sunday afternoons, Monday evenings and sometimes Wednesday evenings. Last 2 hours each time. You sometimes still have to sign up and you get a time slot but if it's not you just turn up within the timeframe. It's much less work for the agent and also for the seller who only has to keep the place nice and tidy for 2 or 3 two hour slots.

I agree with nearly everything that's been said so far!

Both as a buyer and a seller, I find EAs almost univerally crap and barely honest, which is why I'm always mystified when people here talk about the value of "a good high street agent" as though they're anything other than rare as hen's teeth. When you do occasionally come across a good one, they're pretty much always an independent, but not all independents are good, by a long chalk.

I also suspect that as cash buyers we're not as sought after as we imagine, because so many agents look to pad their profit flogging mortgage advice. I reckon cash buyers are generally more experienced buyers too, so more likely to have a trusted conveyancer already and less likely to swallow the EA's crap. Depressing to see that confirmed in the trade press.

Agree that contacting the sellers direct is a good move. I've done it on occasion when I was getting nowhere trying to organise a viewing.

And yeah. Kiev is probably right about lay-offs. Must look out my very teeniest of violins.

Oh and just to add that if you're a cash buyer, you're chain free, so no chance for the agent to try and bully you into selling through them too, and letting them organise a mortgage etc for your buyer too, and theirs, etc etc. The whole thing is such a racket.

The agent I used to sell last year was brilliant and from email chains further into the process, my buyers were very happy with them too.
Ive recently bought elsewhere and prior to that signed up with loads of agents. Most were helpful and proactive. One was a bit arrogant and one seemed totally disinterested.
The property we ended up buying was with really good agents. In my experience it’s the exception rather than the rule that they are bad.

@DepartureLounge - stats time. 40% of house sales over the last 12 months have been by cash buyers. Idk about in former years, but I'd have thought they'd be far rarer than that.

Not in 2023, apparently.

So, with there being so many of them, I guess they're slightly less desirable now. And they're definitely perceived as being more demanding, and more likely to gazunder. Plus they can't be bribed into being forced to use the EA's mortgage broker (which they are currently telling people is an 'affordability check' and then trying to force mortgage services upon them).

We encountered a poor agent when we bought many years ago.
House had been on the market for over a year, vendors must have been desperate to sell as he'd already had to rent a flat in the new area he was working in, with his DW staying in the old house to keep it going. We had a purchase fall through, and a buyer, so needed to move fast, viewed on Friday night, rang on Sat morning to put in an offer at full selling price. The agents refused to record or pass on the offer or contact the vendor as the tiny sub-branch that dealt with that house wasn't open on Saturdays. It was bank holiday weekend, the branch wouldn't be open until Tuesday. In the end we broke the rules, tracked down the vendor's number, and rang them up. To say the vendor was hopping mad with their agents would be an understatement- OH did the phoning and I could hear the poor man a room away. DH and he came to a 'gentleman's agreement' that they would accept our offer, and the vendors hotfootted it to the new location across the country to get viewings there that weekend, as both they and we needed to move quickly. All worked out fine in the end.

A lot of 'cash buyers' really aren't. We were told our buyers were last time, they were not, they were selling to FTBs.

We sold earlier this year to our neighbour. She sold her house to us privately. When she formally made an offer to our agent they called to let us know and sounded almost bored. I think they were ticked off that they had failed to sell it and our neighbour viewed with us rather than through them. I'm still bitter I had to pay the fee

I agree, but not for the purpose of these stats.