EA - are they telling the truth?

peri_2

Hi all. we are in the process of 'trying' to sell our house. The EA dont seem to be doing anthing at all! i phoned them last week to see how things were going and he turned round to me and said that it was a shame that our house wasnt on the market last week as they had 2 first time buyers lookng at 1 bed houses and ours would of been perfect.....but our house have been on with them for 3 weeks! so why didnt they look round ours! and when i said this he sort of got all snotty and changed the subject! so were they lying? or worse still, not offering people ours - which i dont see why they shouldnt seeing they want a sale!

also - the lady dealing with our house has 'left' this EA and someone else has took over. he said that the people in his folder dont want our house, but there is another girl who has some names of first time buyers in her folder but she isnt in for a week.....but im confused? dont they all work for the same EA? and if so why have people got all different names of buyers and arnt sharing them?

our EA are turning out to be rubbish!

rchddap1

You could give them a deadline for something to happen before you will move your property to a different estate agent. At the end of they day they are supposed to be providing you with the service of marketing and selling your house (for a fee of course). If they aren't doing their job, move EAs.

Doozergirl

Your EA's sound like they're more interested in keeping 'their' buyers and sellers to themselves in fear of losing personal commission, than actually communicating with each other or, God forbid, selling houses! They can't be particularly clever working the way they are - acting like a control freak is much more likely to lose sales than gain them. A week can be a long time for a purchaser - they can easily find something else in that time.

I really think you should dump your agent and find a new one that is able to work as a trusting team to work best for you, not themselves as individuals.

[Deleted User]

Not sure what's going on there, but they sound very dodgy, I'd switch ea asap!

[Deleted User]

Also, you can always speak to the branch manager to find out why you're not getting viewers!

misfire

I used to harrang our estate agent when i got home on friday nights - eventually they sent me a print out of how many hits they had on the web site, details sent and viewers.... on there was someone who didnt turn up (and I had told them that) and someone i had never heard of.

i should have switched then and there but didnt. I felt completely lied to by our agent (whose collegue bought our house after out buyer dropped out... bought it at a lower rate of course...... our original buyer we never met they showed them round...... hum... the cinical person in me thinks the buyer never existed .... thats what happens when you loose the tgrust between seller and EA ).

My point is if you feel they are lying to you and not working on your behalf they probably arent. Phone up and pretend to be looking for a house in you area with the same spec as you and see if they offer you your own house .. if they know your voice get your mate to do it!

lush_walrus

It sounds to me as if your EAs are lying.

But one thing to bare in mind is that it is a quite time of year in EA world and I know what it is like to sell, but I also know what it is like to be constantly harrassed by frustrated vendors wanting an instant sale.

Im not accussing you of the latter, but it is a question that is worth considering (for yourself not necessary to answer on here), if you genuinely feel that you are being patient and the EAs are doing nothing then simply take your property off of the market, leave a week or tell the new EA not to advertise it for a week or so.

But if you think that you have been a bit impatient, putting on too much pressure and backing the EA into a corner then perhaps give them a little bit of time to get viewers around.

EAs try to keep properties on their books and buy themselves time and give vendors encouragement that they will be able to sell the property. It sounds as if that is what they are trying to do in lying to you.

Not many EAs give out only select properties as they dont care which property gets sold as long as a potential buyer falls in love with one of the properties on their books rather than the EA round the corner. Therefore it is highly unlikely that they havent been giving out your property to all potential buyers, so dont worry about that bit of it. If you feel that there is a better EA in the area then change, even if you have signed the contract as long as the property comes off the market then a week later you have 'changed your mind' and decided to try to sell it then all will be fine, but you need to leave a break if you are still under contract or give the impression that you have. If you do decide to change agents then simply stating that you have lost the property you was going for will do the trick, then mirraculously you happen to find one again the week after and decide to sign up with the prefered agent!!

peri_2

LW - can we do that? what about the contract? if we say its off the market, and then a week later put it back up again....wont we be like sued for that or something!?

xela_17

It depends what your lock-in period is. The contract should tell you that.

sportbeth

why not try mystery shopping your EA? We did that, just called and gave them the spec of our house as something we were looking for just to see how hard they pushed it to us. That then reassured us when we heard them selling our details over the phone to us.

lush_walrus

peri wrote:

LW - can we do that? what about the contract? if we say its off the market, and then a week later put it back up again....wont we be like sued for that or something!?

Yes you can definately do that, check on your contract if there is anything on there regarding a time period that it can be re-marketed. Generally there is nothing mentioned, other than the 12 week period that you can not change EAs in. But if you take the property off of the market, it effectively invalidates the contract as the contract has ended due to the property being taken off.

The original EA may well try to kick up a fuss, but most will just leave it as whatever happens you are unlikely to carry on selling through them, so they have already lost you and to carry on fighting will just damage their reputation.

The other option is to be honest and upfront and tell them that you feel they havent been performing for the reasons you have given on here, and tell them that you want to stop marketing it with them.

Are they a chain or an independant?

I have 3 independants, and I make sure that the staff never chase anyone who wants to go to another agency during their contract period. I try to get the staff to remidy where they can to keep the property by offering discounted fees or re-assuring them that anything that has been carried out wrongly will be rectified. But if the vendors still want to go, then I let them as by then they are already lost and being difficult for the sake of it will just further damage our reputation.

EA contracts are not really worth the paper they are written on to be honest, at the end of the day you are signing to pay the EA should they introduce a buyer and the rest is fluff!