Advice Re: Estate Agents Role in House Buying

fluffykittycat

My boyfriend has just had an offer accepted on a property. He is a FTB. Has 5% deposit. Halifax have agreed in principle of give him a 95% mortgage (he'll probably only need 93% due to the offer he had accepted). He has a meeting with the Halifax tomorrow to finalise exact details of mortgage now he's had his offer accepted. He has instructed his solicitor.

The estate agents are being really obnoxious and are demanding to see his mortgage offer and won't take the house off the market until he's taken it in to show them. I have bought and sold houses for years and have never been asked to provide this. We are both very wary about the estate agent's incentives for doing this. They have been badgering my boyfriend from day one to see their financial adviser. However, my boyfriend has declined as he has researched the market and has already found a mortgage, house insurance and TMPP that he is happy with and just wants to get on with buying the property.

Can anyone advise me if estate agents have the right to get involved with looking at a buyer's mortgage offer/details? Surely this is what the solicitors do as part of their conveyancing job?

Any comments would be greatfully received.

pawpurrs

Yes any Good EA should make sure buyer is able to proceed. A lot of sales fall through when buyer is unable to raise finance, as a vendor I would want my EA to make sure that the buyer was able to procced, fairly normal practise, especially in todays climate.

lil_miss_17

I don't really see what the problem is - they're just making sure that you're not wasting people's time. In the current climate, a lot fo people can't get mortgages and they want to make sure that the offer is a real and valid one. Is it really much hassle to show them a piece of paper?

fluffykittycat

Thanks for your replies. We haven't got a problem showing them the evidence that my boyfriend is getting a mortgage from the Halifax. I think it's just the way they are trying to pressurise him to take their products that is making us feel very uncomfortable about the whole thing. If this is normal practice in the current climate then we'll show them the paperwork. Just wanted to run this past people on this forum first, to get advice.

thanks

jimc_2

It doesn't happen so much in the present climate (and Agents deny it ever happened at all!) but one of the shadier alleged Agent practices was to ignore client confidentiality and share the financial details of the prospective buyer to see if a gazump or a phantom 'other offer' was possible to get a better price.

In this case, as pawpurrs says, they are just trying to confirm you as a non-timewaster, but if the offer has been made and accepted, just ignore the Agents. It's extremely unlikely that leaving the 'for sale' board up and the picture in the window is going to get a rival offer or a bidding war nowadays! They're only hedging their bets in case you fall through.