Awful estate agents

[FrodisCapering]

Our house is on the market. Our estate agent has been awful. The final straw was yesterday. A viewing has been arranged a week in advance. They were crystal clear we could only entertain proceedable buyers. When I called after the feedback was they love it but they've got to sell their house.
We've given notice. They have ZERO viewings lined up for the rest of the term but they won't let us out of the contract.
A friend is an estate agent and connected me to a colleague of hers in our area. He's looked at everything and confirmed the price is more than fair for size and location and that the current estate agents have marketed our house poorly. He's shown us his sale statistics for the past month and he is succeeding.
I guess my question is, is there anyone we can speak to about being released from our current estate agents? We are now in the position of them sitting there and doing nothing whilst we lose our dream home.

Can you not just market with the new agent too? And then refuse any viewings from the rubbish agent..

Yes but if the new agent sells it she’d legally have to pay both agents as still under contract to the other one.

Any agent will tell you they are better than the old one. However it's hard to know who will be proactive or not. Next time I'd only use an agent who seemed to have completed on similar properties nearby. My first agent were nice people but too passive. The second agent was more aggressive but got it done at a lower price (but achieved above the list price).

I disagree you need to restrict viewings to proceed able buyers. You can only do that in a very active market as people stop scrolling on Rightmove for older listings.

What got our house sold was actually getting loads of viewings close together and the sense of competition. (My second agent did an open house and got 20 viewings in 1 weekend). We did have to drop the price to get interest but the 4 people who offered were negotiated upwards to be closer to what we wanted.

Our house languished for 3 months with agent 1. We stopped marketing for 2 months and then went under offer with agent 2 in 2 weeks.

You won't get out of your original contract easily so be careful you don't get caught with double sales charges if you instruct a second agent.

It's a stressful process. I hope it works out for you.

Make sure when you do serve notice on your current EA that in your letter/email, you get them to confirm which viewers they introduced to you during their contract. This gives you a record to pass to your new agent so everyone is aware of the demarcation and so there are no nasty surprises when in comes to paying commission. If your new agent knows that Mrs and Mrs X were first introduced by your old EA then there can be no quibbles in terms of who gets the commission.

the likelihood of Mr and Mrs X coming back after having walked away from the first viewing is small but still possible, so it's best to be really clear.

we are doing this when we change agents, it won't be such a complex thing as we only had 1 viewing with old EA and they werent even on the market yet, so the chances of them coming back to us proceedable are pretty much zero.

How much longer does the contract have to run? I might withdraw the house from the market until the end of the contract, then start again with a new agent afterwards. I’d also want a list of names of people who have viewed and instruct the new agent not to allow them to view.

You may be able to get out of the contract if you can show that they are negligent. I did this with one agent, who failed to provide feedback at all, failed to turn up for a viewing, when they were supposed to be the ones doing the viewings, turned up to do a viewing in the evening when we had specifically said we had guests and it wasn’t convenient. The manager said they ‘had fallen below their usual high standards’ and released us from the contract.

It was a large regional chain, where no one communicated with us or each other. One person took calls, another did viewings, someone else did feedback, except they didn’t.

Estate agents can’t magic up interested parties that aren’t there. If your house is on Rightmove then anyone interested in that kind of house for that kind of price will have already found it. It’s unlikely changing agents will a difference. Only thing that makes a difference is reducing price.

Wjy do you want to limit your market to only proceedable buyers? Many people don’t put their house on the market until they know there is a house they want to buy. This happened to me. Once I found a house I wanted, i put mine on the market, accepted an offer and then got an offer accepted on the house I wanted, all within 2 weeks. Especially in the current climate, limiting your options like this doesn’t seem sensible.

I think it’s a mistake to limit the viewers to people who are proceedable ,particularly in the current market
I Can’t imagine the estate agent will let you out of your contract,why would they?

Apologies, I left out some of the story.
We have found a property but we only have until the end of this month to get ours sorted.
We were 100 per cent clear about this from the outset and said we could only entertain proceedable buyers.
Interesting re negligence. Apart from the lack of viewings now, when he had a viewing the previous week, the woman was late so I ended up showing them round. She then hurried them as she said she had less than 10 mins before having to go to another viewing.
They've then let non-proceedable buyers view.
We've had to chase them for feedback.
I get that they can't magic up viewers but we are in an area of high demand and they assured us they had prospective viewers on their books.
All we want is to give someone else a chance to actually sell it.
We can't list with both as we can't afford to pay two fees.

I get that. But is it not a breach of contract to hold us to it and with no viewings scheduled? We've gone with them on the understanding that they'll be showing our house to prospective buyers.

it obviously depends on the terms of your contract,but I very much doubt it
If you can’t get out of the contract you should work with them to improve the chances of a sale for the remaining period of the contract

They won't do anything.
They have absolutely no plan.
I really don't know how to work with them at this point, but open to suggestions.

Honestly 99% of estate agents are useless. The new one might not be any better

You need to check your contract. Are you tied in with only them? What is the notice period?

It's very difficult out there but if the house is the right price and if the EA is aggressively marketing it you are in with a better chance.

When I sold my least favourite house I wanted only proceedable buyers and the EA sent anyone. I changed EAs and dropped the price significantly. My new EA had a pool of people who were looking that they rang around as well as anyone who has viewed in my area. After an open day and one viewing one evening it sold.

Notice period is 28 days and we've already given notice.
We are tied but they aren't doing anything, that's the issue.
House is priced correctly, based in what's sold recently. It's actually a really good deal. Dropping 10k would put it in the same bracket as two bed terraced houses with no parking. It's a four bed in a great location.

Demand for property is down, they probably don"t have many prospective buyers. You lure people out to view by dropping the price, they are all watching for price drops on their apps now.

We can't drop the price because we need it to go on to buy the property we want.
We've priced it to sell. I guess we'll end up taking it off the market in the end. As I say, any less and we are in the realm of flats and two bed terraces.

Ask the property you want to also drop their price.

If you want to DM me I’m more than happy to take a look at the T&Cs in your contract and see if there are any loopholes you can use to get out of the 28 days - 19 years in the industry and latterly used to manage all our national contracts with suppliers

You need buyers (and their lender) to agree it is a good deal. otherwise it isn"t priced for the present market conditions, or demand in that area has dropped off.

That won't happen.

Have you asked?

They are developers and the property is easily worth what they are asking.

Developers don't normally reduce the price of the actual property but they could do other incentives. For example our developer pays the stamp duty bill which is up to a £25,000 reduction on the cost of buying the property.

could be worth checking this with your developer.

They have agreed to do a couple of things that we wanted in the house but no stamp duty paid or reductions

Yes our developer offers upgrades on internal finishes and appliances, as well a as paying the stamp duty bill etc. It does depend on how their sales are going as they want to get properties sold to finance the next round of development.