AIBU? Estate agents..

[rookiehomeseller]

So I really don't know if I am being unreasonable or not, but my experience so far of viewing properties is that estate agents seem to be really poor at following up and managing potential buyers. E.g. I did a second viewing on a house last Saturday and was shown around by someone who just worked Saturdays and proceeded to comment on all the negatives about the house I was viewing. The manager at the agency who I've been dealing with has not yet bothered to call me to get any feedback on my viewing and considering this was a second viewing I would've thought they would've been keen to find out if I want to proceed. It's not an isolated experience, and I find it astonishing that agents who are supposed to be representing the vendor just don't seem to follow up on potential sales, get feedback or promote the positives about a property at viewing. I'm new to this game so maybe I am being unreasonable or have too high expectations of estate agents. I wonder what other people's experiences are?

Sounds about right. I bet that when the sellers ring them up asking for your feedback they’ll claim you ghosted them. Very odd: you’d think they wanted to sell.

They want to sell it to their property developer mates who'll give them a backhander. If you're keen you need to follow up with them

oh gosh, we had the same experience. We looked at quite a few properties, and not called back once for feedback... and they were all different estate agents too. We managed to find a house and literally this morning started the conveyancing process. Even with this property, the EA was terrible (also a Manager) there. Very sales-y and pretty much hid information and downright lied! Either way, we just didn't trust anything that came out of her mouth.

For example, we asked about the house - any extensions done or works, when was the re-wiring done, who lives there, was it marketed before, how long has it been market for, was it under another agent etc etc. we realised she was making 💩up as she went along even if she didn't know the answer.

She said there were no extensions to the house, but the council confirmed there was a two storey done. I thought Tbf to her, maybe she was told no extensions were done by the vendor, so that was easy to look pass. But we grew majorly suspicious of her when the information about how long the property had been on the market etc did not correlate with rightmove and propertylog. it had been on the market for 6 months and only reduced once. I have propertylog (but didn't tell her this) and could see it was marketed first in August 2023. But She told us it was marketed first in late October. I even gave her a chance to correct herself, but then I was fed up and politely pretended oh, the property log just shows it's August and only then did she start to say oh yeh it had been with another agent "now I remember" 🙄etc etc. I asked all this and she basically lied!

It's just terrible. and i think it's a sign of how dire the market is. EA are lying about nonsense! It's definitely a buyer's market so if you're a buyer and you think the house is over-priced do not pay more than you think it's actually worth!

I also think they are lying to vendors, telling them fake feedback that they hadn't actually collected. so now, I wouldn't trust anything they say even as a seller. a truly unprofessional industry right now.

@cupcakesarelife so interesting to hear your experience, congrats on getting this far! I think you are right it's a buyer's market at the moment. I chose my agent because it's two guys one owns the business and the other is a partner, had a conversation about the quality of feedback, follow up etc but who know really what they will be saying.

I’ve met some awful ones. One agent told me that we would own the wasteland behind the house (sold it as a potential building spot) when I looked over the fence it was the well manicured, well established garden of the house behind.

Either this or landlords that use the EA to manage their properties.

This sounds like terrible sales technique, we moved last year and every viewing was followed up within 24 hours, asking what we thought, giving us an update on level of interest (sometimes to the point of feeling too pushy.... lots of viewings, offer quickly, etc).
If this is common to several different agents I'd be letting the vendors know. Appreciate it's difficult if you don't have a way to contact them; we were staying in the area and typically had mutual friends with all the vendors. Maybe that's why the agents were so on it. They knew the vendors would hear if they weren't doing their job!

Perhaps it was one of the EA's who knows they are being shut down - and have lost motivation?

There are good ones and bad ones.

Some estate agents we've viewed through have been brilliant. Viewings arranged promptly, feedback requested, other properties suggested etc.

Others have been terrible. One particular agent we contacted nearly 2 weeks ago to request a viewing. Chased it up twice since and still don't have it sorted. Feel like putting a note through the sellers door explaining! We've requested other viewings through this agent and it's been hard work and us chasing them.

yeh i agree, who knows. It's also hard because buyers and sellers are relying on this middle man who may (very likely) be saying whatever to each person to get what they can for themselves. i felt sorry for our elderly vendor, I imagine he was told fibs and probably got a headache from the one who was managing his property because we just did not trust her sigh

I had this 5yrs ago as a cash buyer staying with family and desperate to buy. Sometimes agents didn't even turn up for viewings.

I laughed 3yrs ago when an agent phoned me and asked if I was still looking to buy. I said no, I'd purchased in cash 2yrs previously. They went rather quiet...!

Yes we have viewed various properties with various EAs and they are like 80% really unprofessional (e.g., do not know anything about the property, gets time confused, lies etc). The ones we find worst was they would schedule viewings and not show up and then when we call them, they say the seller didn't give them the keys or the tenants suddenly went out etc (why did you book it then!). There was even one EA who kept calling me with properties that are completely out of our criteria (he called three times in a week with the same property...) It's like they have no database saved somewhere

Our experiences that have been consistently horrible are Foxtons, I feel like they also take on the worst overpriced properties because that's what they must promise to the sellers to get the business... Best experience had been with local EAs that are small and only operate within the area. Those EAs seem to know their sellers really well. Saville has been fantastic but they only seem to do high priced properties.

I really don't expect much from the EAs, but please can they schedule well/be on time and also provide basic information (lease, ground rent, service charge, seller's situation), and write our criteria down somewhere so they don't keep calling us with the wrong properties, also do not lie about negative things (the common lies we encountered are not showing in the pic the property is on the train side / do not offer that information, saying the garden is private but it's shared, the seller is obviously in chain but will prob 'break the chain' if we offer the right amount etc...)

Thinking about my experience in the past 6 months house hunting in London and venting...

I've had bad experiences with estate agents recently. One (branch manager, large upmarket chain) lied blatantly to me about how they'd advertised the house, they also got the directions to the house wrong on the draft brochure they produced for me.

The current agent I'm using came round with a couple and proceeded to tell them that if they wanted to change the windows in the house (single glazed) they would have to get permission from the local council, which could take ages. The house isn't listed and isn't in a conservation area. It's about 1/4 of a mile from a conservation area, which I told her but she was adamant that they'd need to speak to the council and get permission. With people like this supposedly trying to sell my house, how will it ever get sold?

It's like choosing the least bad option IMO. They all seem to be hopeless.

From what I have heard and read so far:

• Don't go with any agent who ties you in for more than 8 weeks (preferably 4 weeks).
• Expect to pay 50/100% more in fees to a good EA. They'll earn it in 4/8 weeks.
• Avoid any agent who offers to "value" your home. The market values your home - not an EA. All an EA does is recommend a marketing strategy.
• Ask to see their stats - average days to sell, average reduction in initial marketing price, percentage fall-thru's, etc

XVGN - how would you know if those stats are true and not just some made up figures?

Good question. Ask for independent ones. They can show you stats from the TwentyEA system which appears to cover the majority of agents in an area.

To see this system, check out a YT video - UK Property Market Stats Show - and scoot through to the final third (roughly) where they use the system to see how local agents are performing in a selected area each week.

I don't know how TwentyEA ensure that the data is clean but I'd assume that the other agents would get angsty if not.

Estate agents get a really hard time on here. Not all EA are bad, there are good and bad. It can be a thankless job and the negative press can mean you're up against it from the offset.

Few other professions get such a hard time, got forbid anyone was to criticise teachers, there'd be a pile on.

A "valuation" is the industry term for a visit to let vendor know your opinion of what their property is worth and suggest marketing. Your third point is nonsense.

We saw a house that went online Monday the 15th. We called the agent continuously this week, sent enquiry forms, left voicemails - no answer. Finally get through to them yesterday and ask for a viewing. They were going to check and get back to us. Nothing. Called up again today, and apparently there are already 6 offers outstanding on the house. It might be true, but since it's taken us most of a week to almost have a viewing and it's only been online for nearly two weeks, I sincerely fucking doubt it.
There are some good estate agents but when they are shit, they are SO shit.

Saturdays are the busiest days of the week with back to back viewings from 9am through to 5pm. Bringing in part timers to help facilitate these viewings is not unusual.

Unfortunately there is very little in the way of formal qualifications required to be an agent so that opens the profession up to all sorts of idiots. There are plenty of very good agents, you just have to find them.

Yes some agents have relationships with property developers but they are not going to bother with all the marketing and multiple viewings if they have someone lined up to make an offer. Why would they??

Do not underestimate quite how many timewasters there are with 'buyers', lots of no shows, lots of hyper prescriptive borderline unachievable tick lists of 'must haves', requests of multiple viewings on the same property with zero follow up offer, just another 'can we look one more time before we decide'.

Most agents have a 'hot list' of serious buyers who they will fall over for. Typically these buyers are cash and will drop everything to do a viewing if the right property comes along. These are the buyers the agent calls before the property gets anywhere near zoopla. They turn up on time, and they give non batshit feedback on why they did not like somewhere. If you refuse to a viewing within 48 hours of the agent calling you up about a new instruction then you are not on the 'hot list'.

For every bad agent there is a shit vendor and a crap buyer.

Thank you for your feedback. I'm aware that they believe that they are giving valuations. They are not. They are just recommending a marketing price. Buyers will determine the valuation through their offers.

@XVGN
Thanks for your opinion. It is just an industry term for the visit - I'm sure you put them right.

Unfortunately it’s a job that doesn’t attract the brightest or the best

This was basically my experience first time buying.

2nd time it was also basically this EXCEPT we found 2 local EAs (not chains) who were actually really good - ie nice people who did their job well

If I was interested in a house I would run the estate agent myself not wait for them to contact me.

If I was in the state agent and didn't hear from you, I would assume that you weren't interested.