Conditional selling in Estate Agents

[Spooky2000]

Radio 4 current have a story on this on You and Yours and people are being asked to report this to Trading Standards. It's where they're not passing on an offer made on a house UNLESS you sell their house with them or use their in-house brokers.

I think there's a slant on this in that if you're chain free and already have a DIP your offer isn't being put forward. I can attest to this having three times in the past been surprised that my offer hasn't been accepted and gone to the Vendor to ask why and been asked "what offer?". Apparently there's a petition to have the EA's regulated and I wholeheartedly support it.

It's gone on forever. 30 years ago DH viewed a property on the day before I completed on my house, told the EA yes we'll definitely offer as soon as DW has seen it the next day. Went to view and said yes we'll offer asking price to be told they won't be passing my offer on as the vendors had already accepted an offer. I had a right complain at EA for wasting my time!
Found out from friends of friends who worked there the offer was lower than asking price, and then the buyers dropped it further prior to exchange, and they didn't think we could afford the property (because I turned up looking scruffy having just moved a 3 bed house into storage, and DH came straight from work) This was despite us having over 50% deposit and we could afford on 1 salary.
Meanwhile we found a better property, so all worked out ok there for us!

EAs should be regulated.

They shouldn't be allowed to profit from selling on extra services which might create a conflict of interest.

This will of course lead to them charging higher prices for sales as they won't be able to make up commission in other ways.

There is a panorama episode about this. It's on iPlayer.