Obvious estate agent lies

[Splattsagain]

I'm inspired to start this thread by the house I found on RightMove with a garden described as (and I quote) "a very private garden to enjoy al fresco dining during those balmy summer months". This is then accompanied by a photo of said garden, quite clearly showing the block of flats right next door overlooking it.

Our buyers used their dads account and said he was loaning them all the money.
This wasn’t true.

I get constant email suggesting houses and they are NEVER suitable.

We are looking for a large 3 bed or if we are lucky 4 bed and 2 reception rooms (likely Victorian terrace as those are the ones that size here) in our town (closer to the center the better preferably) and for under £120k (average terrace price in our town is £68k according to a recent study). We don't really care if they need work doing (building background and we love old features) and are happy to take on a reasonably priced doer up.

We get sent:

• 5 bed maisonettes in other cities

• Tiny 2/3 bed 1960s link terraces on the edge of town

• Huge detatched mansions outside of town for offers over £550k

• Fully renovated developer houses that are twice our budget and ghastly

• Houses listed as 4 bed that are actually 2 bed with a non legal extension room that you have to walk through another room too and/or a shed 'annex' tacked on and/or a dining room with a bed in it.

Its actually bizarre, like its not a hard brief we gave we are looking for something fairly standard.

Oh, thank you so much for this. My ribs are actually sore from laughing!

We had somebody who was supposedly a cash buyer, when selling a deceased family member's house. However, having got his foot in the door with that 'fact', he then 'decided that he would get a mortgage after all, to free up some funds for the work he wanted to do to the house'.

Even that was a lie, as he obviously was unable to get the mortgage that he needed to buy it and kept on stringing us along for a very long time, until we gave him a strict deadline and then he pulled out 'if we were going to be like that'.

Complete time-waster who had clearly decided that he wanted the house and just thought that actually having the funds to buy it would magically sort itself out somehow.

We haven’t got as far as viewing anything yet, but I always wonder about the listings that highlight “viewing advised”. Sounds…ominous. The photos always look great so the only question that elicits is “so, what’s wrong with it?”

As a seller I’m frustrated that ours is listed as a 4 bed. I tried correcting the EA three times that it’s 3. The fourth should be a study - it doesn’t have a door (just a doorway, open) and access to a family bathroom is through there. I don’t want families with 3+ kids wasting their time since the fourth bedroom is not very good to put a bed in. So as some kind of compromise it’s now shown in the floor plans as a ‘bedroom/study’ but the listing still says ‘4 bed detached’.

I'd demand they change this, don't forget they're working for you after all. Have they also valued it as a traditional 4 bed too?

Small bedrooms can absolutely be counted as one of course and a door could easily be added, but having to walk through it to access the bathroom is obviously a definite no-no! I actually shared a link on here once, to a bizarre layout where you had to walk through the only bathroom to get to the 4th bedroom! It was priced in line with other 4 beds and got taken off the market eventually 🤷‍♀️

Another one here that got stung by a ‘cash buyer’. This was ten years or so ago and I imagine agents are better at checks now, but it turned out he was indeed a cash buyer, once he’d sold not one but two houses to get the cash.

Re your OP, @Splattsagain. I don’t think there is any sort of rule about what private garden means, despite what was said upthread, as the definition of only accessible through the house would rule out all detached and semis! But ‘very private’ definitely suggests something extra. 😁

The last house we sold did have a smallish bedroom because previous owners had divided a bigger room into two. It worked well as a child’s bedroom or study but obviously if would be too small for some. I can’t remember now how many combinations of description we went through on the listing to try to give the best idea of it.

This is reminding me of the eppisode of Gavin and Stacey where they were shown a flat in Essex. The estate agent making Gavin simulate 'showering' stacey...... "I want to go home now Gav" 😂

I don’t think it’s wrong of them to have assumed you weren’t interested in purchasing the property - why hadn’t you and the landlord discussed this before putting it on the market and wasting peoples time?

Its also not patronising to ask if you’ll be sad to move out, they probably were probing for info, again assuming you’d been served notice as they landlord put the house on the open market.

People aren’t mind readers!

'Very very private garden.' You turn up and there isn't one.
Well, it's existence is privately within the boundaries of the EA's mind? It's so private that you can't actually see it with the naked eye? 🤣

I remember looking at 'garden' flats years ago on a very tight budget. None had an actual garden at all, just a strip of communal land probably owned by the council facing a main road.

DH and I once viewed a house that had an 'attractive back garden with rockery'. The back garden was a long strip of unmowed grass with a chain link fence on either side, no trees, no flowers, no bushes, just scrubby grass.

As we left:
DH: Did you see the rockery?
Me: Well you know that pile of rubble at the end of the back garden........

There was also the house we saw where the owner had coated the entire sitting room (walls, floor, and ceiling) in Cornish slate. It was like being in a cave with a 1970's metal framed window and net curtain. That wasn't even mentioned in the listing as I think the EA was probably rendered as speechless as we were when the proud owner showed it off to us and had no idea how to describe it.

The "enviable entertaining space in basement" that was best described IRL as "terrifying fire trap dungeon bar with asbestos tile ceiling".

A bedroom that was actually a gun room complete with reinforced steel door- was nice to see that the vendor was a responsible citizen but not v welcoming for guests using it.

"Inset hard landscaped patio feature" which was a shallow, empty and utterly condemned swimming pool with a plastic sun lounger and some tubs in it

'Private garden' might just mean not communal, but 'very private' as in the OP I would take to mean not overlooked at all.

Yeah usually if they are will to sell they go to the tenant first not to market.

The 'cash buyer' for my gran's house took 363 days to complete the purchase 😒

I saw some things in my quest for a bungalow!

Most bungalows need work and I'm experienced at remodelling. I at least expected something warm and dry with reasonably modern electrics and boiler.

One was £250k and needed a cosmetic upgrade. No it did not. The electrics were older than me and unsafe so that's a full rewire. The boiler needed condemning. The private garden and bedrooms were overlooked.

Another one had ivy growing inside but to be fair it did have original features.

Another didn't have mains gas and the conservatory didn't have enough room for two people to stand in (and I'm small).

Another one advertised a utility room when really it was an outside shed.

Another one supposedly had 3 bedrooms which it would have if you extended into the loft.

Not quite the same thing but I am still seething that the lettings agent failed to mention to us that our landlord lives two doors down. I wondered why noone had snapped up this lovely house at a good price. Obviously previous viewers had been told the truth, so they neglected to tell us.
She even said "oh the landlords are so nice, I ended up staying and having a cup of tea with them". She could have just thrown in "in that house, right there, where they live".

Not that I have anything to hide, I just feel constantly watched. It sucks.

We had ‘cash buyers’ too. They were keen to move, were exchanging the following week and completing the week after. Twelve weeks on, they tried and failed to get a mortgage. I don’t know who was to blame and who lied, but someone certainly did.

Quite possibly the EA. I viewed a place on behalf of relatives and the EA told me they'd count as cash buyers due to a high deposit. They still needed a secured bank loan!

DH and I looked for a house to rent when we first moved in together - 2007 - then bought a house in 2010. I mention these dates as google maps was a THING by then, but not perhaps quite so ubiquitous.

This is relevant because at the time I had one of those ridiculous jobs with long hours in the City and I was very very clear, especially when we moved a bit further out of london, that I did NOT want to be walking for 15-20 minutes when I got home at night. I wanted to live no more than 10 minutes from a train station or tube.

Oh my.

My personal favourite was the estate agent who tried to convince me that the walk was "maybe a BIT more than 10 minutes...." I pointed out it was about 12 minutes if I put on my trainers and used it as a way to get a little light jog in at the end of the day. I measured it - it was 1.2 miles from the station. Perfectly reasonable for many people but 100% what I had said I was not willing to do.

When DH & I were looking, decades ago, we too had an ordinary list of requirements: detached house, 3 beds, 2 receps, garden, off-road parking for 2 cars, for a max of £50K.

One notorious estate agent sent us details of anything but what we wanted. They then suggested that we should alter our list & buy a semi-detached house they had 'because you can always move house again' & when I turned down that untempting offer they said in an exasperated tone, "Well, what do you want a detached house FOR?". A friend told me I should've replied, "£50K, actually."😂

MN has ads for French properties again & the first pic made me think of this thread.

It's an apartment in a castle & it's actually very nice - apart from the second pic. Never seen one of those before!

My landlord lives 2 doors down from me. It's no bother at all! The agency didn't tell us but I found out from a bit of googling anyway before moving in. He came round anyway on moving in day and introduced himself. Everything is still all conducted through the agency, the only 'contact' I have with the landlord is if we wave at each other when we're getting in our cars at the same time!

But I thought the estate agent was supposed to verify that the funds are available, be it full cash purchase or deposit and mortgage? When I sold in 2017 they definitely did this when someone put in an offer and before we formally accepted said offer

Views over the Cheshire countryside and field….whilst this is correct, the key detail missing that the first field attached to the back garden wall was the prison playing fields! 🤦🏼‍♀️