Panorama - Undercover Estate Agent

[HappyCrochetHooker]

I’ve got it on now on iPlayer, think it’s on TV tonight. It’s focussed on Purplebricks and Connells - various whistleblowers involved.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg81l57x53o.amp

It’s not eyeopening as such, because I’ve been dealing with another online agent and am not surprised about some of the things raised. It sort of feels vindicating that the dodginess is being highlighted though.

It really was a massive eye opener . Hopefully it will make estate agents more accountable ,now that the general public have had an insight into some of their questionable practices!
Am sure Connells and Purple Bricks are a tip off the iceberg.

I caught a bit of it and have just listened to a discussion on Radio 4 You and Yours about it. My take was that it's endemic and not just the EAs featured.
One of my DC is currently going through the buying process and it's incredibly tricky as a FTB to work out how many people are scamming and don't have the client's best interest at heart.
Bad enough for buyers but the real victims seemed to be sellers, overvaluation, only sending buyers who will use their in house brokers etc..
Advise seems to be use a local independent agent regardless of cost.

I saw it last night, well worth a watch. It was both shocking and also not shocking as estate agents don't exactly have the best of reputations.

I was devastated for the woman who potentially lost out on a higher sale price because the estate agent ignored interest from those who didn't have a mortgage with their broker.

I’d bet that it’s the tip of the iceberg too. I could certainly think of some agents round here that I wouldn’t be surprised about hearing of sharp practice. We certainly would be much more clued up if we ever moved again.

I was asked recently when arranging a property viewing if I had a solicitor in the area.

🙄 my solicitor doesn’t need to be “in the area”. They just need to be my solicitor!

Why would I possibly want the vendor’s solicitor to act for me in buying the vendors property. It’s such a clear conflict of interest! I felt like telling them to fuck off with their shenanigans and focus on the role they were meant to be performing. (I didn’t!)

This made me laugh. There was a thread on Eas a few weeks back and I made the point that EAs are in a powerful position on house sales because they act as gatekeepers to information/sales, and that position has the potential to be abused.

Someone piped up I was talking nonsense.

In Ireland there is proper legal supervision of Estate Agents, Property managers & Auctioneers with a requirement to be registered

Why not here?

This sort of program showcases why estate agents are a profession which many don't respect or trust. I'm sure there are so many incidents like this across many estate agents. I have also seen comments on here about sharing information amongst local agents. They clearly don't think that the GDPR regulations apply to them. I hope that massive fines are given to deal with these sort of huge breaches. It seems unlikely though.

I have recently sold through Connells (not the office featured!) and have to say they’ve been first class. Lovely team, and absolutely no pressure to see their mortgage broker or use their solicitor.

@GasPanic someone told me I was wrong when I said EA often overvalue properties to get sellers to use them 🤷🏻‍♀️

It’s not surprising , anyone whose worked in sales knows it’ll be sell at all costs .

Probably an estate agent.

There are a lot of them about.

Always talking up the market too!

The lack of regulation in the industry brings it into disrepute.

The whole industry needs gutting and reforming IMO.

Doubt very much it will happen.

The terrible thing is of course a good estate agent can actually provide a very useful service and save you/generate you £££££.

Spot the good one though...

The Purple bricks section didn’t surprise me at all and I would think it’s normal , surely the entire point of a sales team is to sell and you obviously work on commission. The Connells part was a bit more of an eye opener because it seemed so dodgy but I thought everyone knew that estate agents are essentially sharks , it’s always been that way .

The problem is the number of house sales has collapsed.

So the only way they can make enough money is to add extra value into a sale.

If there was a move to ban practices that may lead to a conflict of interest the industry would probably shrink by 25% overnight.

In 2008 after my Mother died and my brothers & I had to sell the family home the amount a local independent agent got for it was mind boggling so, yes good agents do exist

I agree.

I wasn't surprised by the section about PB because it's obvious they have to make money somehow so will be selling their services like mad that aren't "free".

But the section on Connells - some of that was quite shocking. Maybe the moral of the story is to buy and sell only through EAs that don't have in house brokers.

TBF, there have been exposés of undertakers, supermarkets, kennels, airlines, care homes, restaurant kitchens, farming and god knows who else we buy from. And Watchdog had dodgy car sellers on every week.

I doubt the estate agents are that bad when you look at the high street/internet generally.

Plus, all of this is without the outrageous shitness and corruption of central government, local government and the public sector.

We live in a crappy world, sadly.

It reminds me a bit of car salesmen who apparently make more money from selling finance and unnecessary gap insurance than selling cars. I didn't believe it until I went to buy a car with cash and they weren't impressed.

I've worked alongside estate agents for 30 years. Everything they showed was pretty standard stuff, but not all estate agents are like that.

The big national chains definitely over value, then drop the price. Push sellers and buyers to their preferred legal team and brokers, and receive referral fees in return.

The small local independents are just part of the community. They may recommend local lawyers and brokers, because they work well with them, and may get referral fees, but they are fighting against the national chains who are very aggressive in their techniques. It is tough out there at the moment for smaller agents.

I'm not a massive fan of these programmes, because they go looking for a story, but the referral fees, pushing clients to brokers and solicitors, over valuing etc by some firms is very much real.

Last time we bought a car it was with cash and the sales guy suggested we take out finance anyway (as it came with 2 free services and a few other small perks) and cancelled it within a month which is what we did.

I guess he also got his bonus for getting another customer to sign up for a finance plan even though we cancelled it before any payments were made.

Strange how some of these companies work and get their money.

I had no idea that Connells owned so many other agents, round here the properties advertised with Connells seem to be the lower end of the market. But it turned out they own Hamptons as well (a bit posher) so they've got a pretty wide grip across the market.