Why I get annoyed with Estate Agents

domcastro

I've been searching for houses on Rightmove and I'm getting bugged with EAs putting the wrong town (on purpose). For example, houses in Pokesdown (which I don't like) being advertised as Southbourne or Boscombe East. Or putting Moordown when it's Charminster etc. Are they allowed to do this? Isn't there some Trade Descriptions Act equivalent?

Also I saw a nice 3 bed detached which I thought was sensibly priced, but then when you read the details, the 3rd bedroom is actually the dining room downstairs. So it's really a 2 bed, 2 reception. Or they use those fish lens (or whatever) camera angles and the drive looks long and the description says parking for 2 vehicles, when you'd have trouble getting 1 in comfortably. Also, I saw a nice white house, looked lovely and clean then I drove past and it didn't look half as clean and white - looked shoddy.
It's really annoying. I have to check the map on each house to make sure it's in the actual part of town they've said. I've driven by 15 houses so far and haven't bothered to view any of them

Running_Horse

I get the same thing searching the pleasant West Malling and getting endless ugly new builds in overpriced Kings Hill. Didn't some EAs used to describe part of Hackney as Islington Borders? Doubt there is much you can do about it, apart from wading through search results you don't want.

Debt_Free_Chick

Part of the problem is that there is no consistency between postal addresses, electoral wards, phone exchanges etc ..... I have a postal "town" of "A" (and I live five miles from that town), with the STD code suggesting a completely different County; the phone number itself is for the exchange in the neighbouring village and the electoral ward is for yet another village - again five miles away!!!

When using Rightmove, the best bet is to get a postcode for the property you'd ideally like to buy and then limit the search to x miles around that postcode.

I've known some sellers to describe their property as being located in "xyz" - being particularly desirable - when it's really situated somewhere not quite so desirable. So it's not just the EAs

Doing the research before you waste a trip is just part of the drudgery of househunting, I'm afraid.

Davesnave

I don't think you will ever stop people using wide angle lenses or even Photoshopping their pictures. The one I did for the EA was certainly 'processed' and I'm well proud of it. Why should I tolerate a dowdy, shadowed picture as the one that people see first?

You should be checking the map anyway, as the most important first step. Aerial views show up all kinds of nasties which, had you been looking several years ago, you'd have had little chance of spotting. Indeed, compared with looking in, say, 2002, we are positively spoiled for info about an area, if we have the inclination to find it: demographics, flood plain maps, past sold prices - it's all there.

And if you are after a country property, perhaps centring your search on Barnstaple, North Devon and 30 miles around, you will come up with some nice Welsh properties!

Quelle horreur!

PasturesNew

Yes, you should have tried buying in "the olden days" of just a few years ago. You had to physically get TO each estate agent on a weekly basis (and they shut at lunchtime on Saturdays) to try to forcibly extract details from them because they didn't used to send you everything they had you might be interested in, they only sent you a few (if any) based on their interpretation of what they thought you should have or what they thought you could afford.

Positively spoilt you are nowadays!

nomoneyleft

PasturesNew wrote: »

Yes, you should have tried buying in "the olden days" of just a few years ago. You had to physically get TO each estate agent on a weekly basis (and they shut at lunchtime on Saturdays) to try to forcibly extract details from them because they didn't used to send you everything they had you might be interested in, they only sent you a few (if any) based on their interpretation of what they thought you should have or what they thought you could afford.

Positively spoilt you are nowadays!

i don't know why people still use estate agents or these rightmove websites...

they are writtenfor estate agents by estate agents so they get full control on what you see, that house that has not sold is years is at the top etc and the area is slightly just out of your search.

we need to change our attitude to private advertising website i.e they just advertise properties for people and cut out the middle 1% - 3% man.

you get just the properties you asked for and no sneaky moves to try and get their properties sold.

with the current climate estate agents are in for a rough ride, this forum is all about saving money, use the private website's or the freeads if we can get people to change there obsession with estate agents then we can all save money.

PasturesNew

nomoneyleft wrote: »

i don't know why people still use estate agents or these rightmove websites...

they are writtenfor estate agents by estate agents so they get full control on what you see, that house that has not sold is years is at the top etc and the area is slightly just out of your search.

we need to change our attitude to private advertising website i.e they just advertise properties for people and cut out the middle 1% - 3% man.

you get just the properties you asked for and no sneaky moves to try and get their properties sold.

with the current climate estate agents are in for a rough ride, this forum is all about saving money, use the private website's or the freeads if we can get people to change there obsession with estate agents then we can all save money.

And where do you propose we find the time for any other system?
At least with rightmove you only have to look in one place.

It's fine if you are looking in one village that is served by 1-2 local agents, it's manageable, but how do you find every estate agent that is covering a particular area? Where I lived half the houses were on with local agents, 40% were on with London agents 250-300 miles away and 10% were on with agents 20 miles away.

You'd need to track down every freeads site known to mankind and painstakingly trawl through them all, with their different interfaces, different ways of searching.

Davesnave

nomoneyleft wrote: »

i don't know why people still use estate agents or these rightmove websites...

they are writtenfor estate agents by estate agents so they get full control on what you see, that house that has not sold is years is at the top etc and the area is slightly just out of your search.

we need to change our attitude to private advertising website i.e they just advertise properties for people and cut out the middle 1% - 3% man.

you get just the properties you asked for and no sneaky moves to try and get their properties sold.

with the current climate estate agents are in for a rough ride, this forum is all about saving money, use the private website's or the freeads if we can get people to change there obsession with estate agents then we can all save money.

Daftest idea I've seen in a month! If you think you can sell without an agent at the moment you are extremely naive.

You may not like EAs, but at least they are bound by the Estate Agents Act, Property Misdescriptions Act etc, whereas your average seller is bound by nothing and scarcely impartial. Get real.

Running_Horse

Globrix has a useful "search by map" feature. It can be a little slow to load, but really shows (for example) those properties miles from a village down some lane, if that's what you do or don't want.

bo_drinker

I think the EA'S days are numbered. Internet is the future. How I don't know but the current climate will certainly sort the wheat from the chaff.

rach83

Estate Agents are not allowed to misrepresent properties under the Property Misdescriptions Act. To do so is a criminal offence. This covers written descriptions and photographs. Trading Standard do investigate such matters!!