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.

I once saw a house online that had a 6 foot hedge around it. Dismissed the house as I wouldn't want to have to maintain a huge hedge.

The following week saw a lovely house in the same area, booked a viewing. It was the same house! They had retaken the photos ti crop the hedge out. Still
Didn’t buy it and was annoyed my time was wasted.

I've been here five years. I hate it. He walks past my house several times and day and stares up at my windows. I feel like my front garden must be constantly tidy and my windows cleaned all the time. Even if that's not the case, I still feel watched and I don't like it.

Seriously? Did a hedge really put you off? You realise you could have bought the house and cut it down?

@Doris86 it was huge it went round the entire garden and it was so high. I wouldn't have wanted to get rid of it (plus it would have cost a fortune to remove and replace it) nor would i have wanted to maintain it.

got potential; falling down and hasn't been touched since time began
easily maintained garden; astro turf and concrete
family home; knocked about scruffy and no storage
laundry room; an old shed on the back

It's easily faked, though. They can 'borrow' the money from somebody else for a few days, just until it shows on their bank statement, and then pay it straight back again.

I don't know if it would still work, but at one time, you could write yourself a huge cheque from another account and pay it in - then the balance (albeit not yet available to draw on) would show on a case machine mini statement. Obviously, it would bounce and the balance would soon be corrected again, but there was an opportunity to grab a false snapshot for 'proof' purposes.

If somebody turns up at the EA, full of bluster and confidence and insisting that they 'have means' - which they can 'prove' (albeit easily falsifiable), the EA may well not want to irk an 'important person' by persisting - the same way as celebrities and other wealthy folk tend to get away with ten times as much as Sharon from Basingstoke ever would.

@Sacredhandbag That sounds awful. My last house, the landlord lived in Dubai. I would still get letters from the agency saying "the landlord says your hedges need cutting" - he had a neighbour phoning him up to report on the condition of the house! That used to make me very anxious and angry. I often thought of doing some crude topiary with those damned hedges, so glad I moved out!

Ours asked them and they gave them his dads account details which had plenty in to buy in cash. They just never intended to actually use that money.
Job done as far as they are concerned.

On a previous sale the woman changed her mind and decided she’d get a mortgage in stead of paying in cash.

There’s nothing EA can do other than believe what the buyers tell them….lies and all.

The trend for counting everything as a bedroom if you can squeeze a sofa in the kitchen living area was a nightmare when we were looking last year.

We wanted 6 bedrooms. Not 3 bedrooms, a living room and dining room utilised as dining rooms and a dodgy attic conversion. I actually asked one agent where he expected our large family to spend any time when he sent one lot of details as you literally wouldn't have fitted us all in the 'living area'

Walking distance to.....
Well yeah technically you could walk 3 mile's to the nearest shop/school etc, so it isn't a lie, but makes it seem way more convenient than it is.

In our town often houses are described as walking distance from excellent schools. And sometimes they are reasonable walking distance - just over a mile away for example but said schools are forever oversubscribed and the catchment areas are pretty small, so being within walking distance isn't really the bonus is advertised.

Around here, many of the primary schools have catchment zones of less than 0.5 miles and even the really big ones are still well under 1 mile. So "close proximitiy to the many Ofsted Outstanding primary schools" is completely irrelevant.

The place we are buying was described in the ad as 'open plan kitchen / diner'. It isn't at all. The door has been removed between the two rooms so technically you could shout between them 😂. Not only that but there's only about a metre of wall overlap so you couldn't even knock through to make it open plan. We are going to move the kitchen in its entirety anyway but it's hilarious how they've chosen to represent it in the blurb.

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

There's nothing they can do if the person then decides not to use the cash

That's what happened to us. Cash availability was verified and then three months in they decided they wanted to buy another property at auction, so needed the cash, and would be getting a mortgage to buy ours.

We pulled out as they hadn't even started the mortgage process and we'd had three other cash buyers make offers.

If it was just our house I definitely would, but it’s a bit complicated and I’m not the one handling it. It’s a family farm that has gone on sale as an entire estate, with two residential houses, agricultural buildings and land. The actual listing is for “9 bedroom detached” - the main farm house has 5 bedrooms. While the deed for our house is ours, the sale process is being coordinated by my in-laws who own the main house and the land. The EA had a hundred other mistakes in their initial drafts that as long as the final listing was accurate enough it will have to do.

Many times through this process I have thought “oh, to have the confidence of a white, male, boomer!” How they produce such shoddy work and still act like they’re the bee’s knees.

TBF ( devil’s advocate) it is surprising how many people do end up buying somewhere which doesn’t ‘tick all their boxes’ and sometimes is fairly different to their initial enquiry. Guilty as charged! Bought a house which was not ‘detached’ which we had always sworn we would never do again, but….. it was the enormous barn which was semi joined onto the main house, which had a party wall at loft level with the neighbours’ house ( ancient French house). If thé immobilier had taken us at our word about no shared wall we would have missed seven happy years…..

When I had a brief Part time job in an agency, I once did a rental of a terraced cottage to someone who was looking for a detached and fairly modern house….but they did want to be near the station, and this was. Took them to see it, they 😍 ( so did my bank account) ; downright lies are different, of course.

We literally NEED a 4 bedroom, we will take a large 3 bed that we can split up into a 4 bed. It needs to be near my kids school which they are use to and are great with their SEN. It HAS to be in our cash budget, I don't qualify for a mortgage and as a disabled person with zero job security (currently not working) I don't want one even if I could find one willing to take me.

There ZERO point them deciding to show us a tiny 2 bed or something in another city or something double our budget... it could be the nicest house in the world but it would be utterly USELESS.

Our list isn't trivial 'wants' of 'Oh I fancy a garden and it would be nice to have a garage' its literal NEEDS that we cannot budge on.

Oh you poor thing, how awful.
I would immediately think "great, a landlord who lives in Dubai, I'll get left alone"
I'd feel constantly on edge if I then found out he had a neighbour spying on me, to not even know which neighbour either - I couldn't cope!!

Landlords seeing these concerns probably think that means we have something to hide but we just want to feel at home!!

we looked a house that advertised a large conservatory the pictures didnt show that every window and piece of glass in the roof had blown and would have been cheaper to start again, and the back garden pictures had been taken at an angle to make it look fairly big, the truth was it was a two foot wide wedge shaped strip that had a two foot fence round it and every house behind it and the two next door neighbour were looking straight into it, if i had lined up the four cats i had at the time there would have been no garden left for us

It's definitely not cheaper to start a whole conservatory again just because the glass has blown...

@Sacredhandbag I know as weve had glass replaced in this house but the whole thing was just a mess and the house was top end of our budget at the time so was not possible , it also needed a new kitchen, bathroom electrics the lot, and dodgy looking teens outside the front next door garden

Here in Sydney its common that the pictures are edited.
I viewed one place that looked fresh and bright. What looks like a white kitchen/countertop and trim was actually variable shades of cream. The floor that looked like light beige wooden floor was actually that horrible grey colour instead. It was very dated in real life. They had obviously photoshopped the whole thing. Its very common now and beyond frustrating.

I think you’ll find it’s “sort after” 😉

Some flats were being built in our town on the site where a pub used to be. The bit of land is awkwardly positioned immediately buy a roundabout with a supermarket entrance opposite and a railway bridge to the other side. The artist impression made them look as if they were surrounded by green space, and would be really quiet, when in reality there are about 6 -10 trains an hour and frequent traffic using the supermarket.

@HotCrossBunplease

I think you’ll find it’s “sort after” 😉

I'll think you'll find it's not 😘

(edited to bold the text of HotCrossBunplease post)

I saw a house advertised on Rightmove, exactly what we were looking for, size, area, price. Back garden not overlooked. That was because it backed on to an horrifically busy dual carriageway.