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?

It's a minor detail in the scheme of things. Did you agree with the rest of my suggestions?

IMustDoMoreExercise - I can't imagine anyone house hunting waits for the phone to ring with an estate agent suggesting a property to them, the only exception being if it hasn't been marketed yet, in which case you won't know about it unless they ring.

One Saturday assistant who accompanied a viewing on my house last Summer looked at the lean-to in the garden (adjoining my Victorian house) "oh that must have been the original outside loo". The couple viewing looked at me and I said nothing. The lean-to was built of basic concrete blocks with a corrugated plastic roof - I don't think this house has ever had an outside loo. Sometimes you just wish they'd stop talking, they just show their ignorance.

My DH is an estate agent, quite high up in a big firm… they have a nightmare finding good staff who are motivated. Nowadays sales staff are generally quite young because the money isn’t great, especially in this market, and they have an aversion to picking up the phone and are overly reliant on text/email communication if at all… it’s a regular gripe of DH. They once got him a T-shirt as a joke for Christmas with a quote on the back saying “just pick up the phone…”. A lot of this has happened since Rightmove etc came along and they get a lot of people who enquire who really are just window shoppers which is very frustrating for sellers…
I think EA get a hard wrap for being “liars”, reputable ones generally aren’t (from my experience) and there is a lot of legislation to prevent that, they’re usually just trying to manage two people with opposing wants who are not always truthful. But yes, I think nowadays many agents are very apathetic about the role and don’t understand the importance of communication, but I think that applies to many people nowadays who prefer to hide behind a screen. I used to be an agent and we had a three strike rule, if they didn’t call back after the third time we wouldn’t chase again. I had a real passion for the job but quit because people in general could be so horrible. I’m a building surveyor now… people always return a call from their building surveyor 🙂.

Just because you're here, has your DH's firm rolled out the NTS Material Information details yet? I'm curious to see that hardly any ads on RM seem to be compliant yet. Is there pushback to NTS? Thanks.

https://www.nationaltradingstandards.uk/uploads/Material%20Information%20in%20Property%20Listings%20(Sales)%20v1.0.pdf

@XVGN
Points 1 and 2 very valid. A good agent will sell a house within 4 weeks, if they try to tie you in for very long periods it's because they're unsure of their ability to sell, or they think the price you've chosen is too high.
Point 3 - disagree.
Point 4 - estate agents will manipulate the stats. The little Rightmove graphs they bring out are entirely manipulated and encouraged by Rightmove and mean nothing. They are unlikely to give you bad stats.

An estate agent can’t magically make people want your house no matter what they say or how they act. Most people will go and look at house and use their own intelligence to weigh up if the house is worth the asking price. Like someone said above - most agents are young men / women so they probably aren’t on the housing ladder themselves.

If a house has been knocking about on the market for 6 months plus it’s pretty obvious it’s just priced wrong. Blaming an estate agents incompetence is ignorant.

People buy from people. When I was viewing homes if I was on a bad day and couldn't be bothered it would show in my stats. If I was on form the complete opposite.

A house will sell itself at the right price, but a good agent will influence a sale or not.

I can’t imagine any salesman making me part with hundreds of thousands of pounds because they have some winning sales patter. Unless maybe to young inexperienced first time buyers perhaps? Depends who you are selling to I suppose.

@Mothermummymum I was a 40-something Director in a very well run agency. It wasn't 'sales patter' it was highlighting the pros and cons of the property in a way that fit the buyer. You have a very limited (and ageist) view of this if you think only young inexperienced need help buying.

Me neither.

I value EAs who are good salespeople and know their stuff and have met a few I have really respected. But whether I buy a property or not is 100% to do with the property and not the skill of the salesperson.

Then again - I'm a property geek and do my own research. I guess not everyone does so maybe those people can be more swayed by EA marketing.

And I agree with @Hatenewyear that an EA valuation is an industry term for an EA visit where they give the owner their suggested price to sell the property at.

You can't avoid EAs calling it a "valuation" and nor do you need to. It's a non issue because the EA isn't promising that your house is worth that much. At the point the owner accepts the EA "valuation" they accept that it will go to market for that amount and the market will decide whether they get an asking price offer or more or less.

I already accepted that's what most - not all - of the EA's think they are doing.

But the truth is the value is determined by the market - not the seller or the EA. Ignore the sticker price and just offer what the home is worth to you.

Here's an EA who does Advice Meetings rather than "Valuations". They apparently have no tie in period, but expect you to pay a larger than average fee for their services.

https://powerbespoke.co.uk

While we're on about selling property, my fellow geeks may like this site

https://housemetric.co.uk/house-price-analysis/SW15-5/London

That's what I said "the market will decide whether they get an asking price offer or more or less."

I don't like it.

I love it!

@Hatenewyear sorry my post does read badly - I don’t mean to come across as ageist. I just think the point I was trying to make - albeit badly - is that whilst a good salesperson does leave a good impression, it won’t make me buy something as big as a house off the back of it. You only have to watch Kirsty and Phil ‘Love it or List it’ to see that sometimes no matter how hard Phil tries they just won’t be talked into moving.

I stand by the fact if you have your house on the market and it doesn’t shift after 6 months then you have to seriously consider if it has been priced massively wrong. Then you have to work out if the same EAs that you are frustrated with are the ones that told you to list your house for that in the first place?

The houses where I live shift very quickly - I’m talking within weeks - when they are priced right.

@XVGN absolutely no idea. Sorry. I haven’t heard him talk about it. They’ve always had property information forms which included a request for similar info but it was like getting blood from a stone from sellers in most cases. I’m sure there are internal conversations and many agencies will be seeking legal advice on how best to approach this to avoid accidentally misrepresenting information by relying on a vendor’s word.

I'm glad it's not only us having these sorts of experiences!

We've just sold 1 property (completed) and have another to sell, EA constantly implying we're time wasters because we're not in a position to proceed. I get it, but also the market is very slow here, the house we want has been on the market for 5 months so I think it wouldn't be a massive deal to reply to our phone calls?!

Eg we're thinking about lowering the price of ours (again) to reflect the slow market. Phoned EA and asked if they'd accept £810k (on the market at £875) because then we could lower ours to £675. Obviously they may not want to answer, and we don't expect them to stop other viewings when we're not in a position to proceed, but I think returning our call would be a basic courtesy.

Thanks for that link, Twiglets1, very interesting. Sadly, the £/sq m values they show don’t reflect the actual value I’m looking at with my house. I suppose there’s a point at which a large house fetches a significantly lower £/sq m than other similar but slightly smaller properties. Very useful to see the real figures though.

EA will state that a good price can be achieved, show round a few buyers who clearly have no interest in the property as they need a property with more bedrooms/off street parking or whatever. They then claim price needs to be reduced drastically and immediately up pops LL. House appears as a rental in EAs office. Well worth losing a bit in commission for ongoing management fees.

The link came from @XVGN actually but I agree it’s very interesting.

I’ve checked my house and my daughter’s flat and it’s reassuring to see that we didn’t overpay square footage-wise. Would definitely take the average square footage/square metre price for the postcode into account for any new property I was buying.

It’s probably impossible for them really to predict what the sellers would say if you were to offer 810k and were proceedable. I imagine the owner would have to take your offer extremely seriously but they may not even know themselves yet what their bottom line is.

The best thing is just to get your house sold (easier said than done in this market) & then try? It’s always hard to answer theoretical questions but an 810k offer from someone ready to go would at least have a chance of being accepted.

They do seem to help to make slow markets slower. Also, contrary advice on presenting a house. Friends selling lovely house for elderly relative had one agent say to make sure the house isn’t empty to show off its potential and another say clear it and present it as a shell to show off potential. It’s a big house, so the barn sized living room isn’t going to look small with furniture she didn’t take to the granny flat with her, likewise the rest of the house. They have had to extract info on all the viewings

In your scenario the vendor has to be quite dim for that to play out. Vendor's typically invite at least three estate agents around to conduct valuations as well as doing their own research using the wealth of current and historical information now available online in order to arrive at a realistic valuation of their property. Any demands by the EA for a subsequent drastic price reduction can be challenged with skepticism using live market data for their area.