OMG! BBC Whistleblower - Estate Agents

MORPH3US

We put an offer in on a house a month ago, house was £152,950 and we offered to meet the seller at £148,000. The EA came back and said "they will only accept £151,000" and when we said that £148,000 was our final offer, another offer of £151k appeared out of nowhere. Of course the vendor preferred to sell to us but only if we could offer £151k. We told them where to go and a month later the house is still on the market!

Hope they are happy because we have found another house now! I just wish I could go back and rub their noses in it!!!

M

NAR

sm9ai wrote:

THis has to be a must watch for anyone thinking of buying a property.

Totally agree, especially first time buyers. I know very good advice is given on here to those who seek it, but how many thousands out there are getting their eyes wiped?

NAR

MORPH3US wrote:

We put an offer in on a house a month ago, house was £152,950 and we offered to meet the seller at £148,000. The EA came back and said "they will only accept £151,000" and when we said that £148,000 was our final offer, another offer of £151k appeared out of nowhere. Of course the vendor preferred to sell to us but only if we could offer £151k. We told them where to go and a month later the house is still on the market!
Hope they are happy because we have found another house now! I just wish I could go back and rub their noses in it!!!
M

Well done to you; but how many innocents out there would have fallen for that one - quite a few I would imagine.

gundo

Estate agents being economical with the truth. Surely not! Stop the world I want to get off.

A lot of EA's I met were total sharks.

I shall be watching tonight and I won't be surprised one bit by what I see. I'm sorry for those EA's who are law abiding and ethical but no sympathy for exposing the liars and cheats (criminals?).

gundo

sm9ai wrote:

Looks like it should be a very good program and about time someone did something like this.

THis has to be a must watch for anyone thinking of buying a property.

Wish it had been on prior to me buying a house last year.

I fell for the "chat to our IFA re mortgages" ploy. I'm pretty certain my offers weren't being passed on and mysetreiously after my chat with their IFA the price went up.

frivolous_fay

I had a strong feeling when we put in an offer for our current flat that the buyer who had apparently put in an offer a couple of grand over ours was entirely fictitious. I was pretty sure the EA was lying to me on the phone, but we needed to move pretty urgently so we went along with it.

I'm planning to move again soon. I hope we have the will-power to call their bluff if it happens again!

By the way... the EA we dealt with were Connells. During the course of the transaction they also:

- took us to see an empty property that turned out to be occupied by some very messy students
- failed to turn up to a meeting at the property which I had travelled 100 miles for (because they'd lost the keys, see below)
- LOST the KEYS, gave us the wrong ones and refused to compensate for the locksmith we had to call out in the evening of the day we tried to move in

Based on the above I hope NEVER to deal with them again!

pin

I still don't understand why the whole home buying market is not regulated and to be an EA you require proper qualifications.

Ian_W

Makes a change from B & C list celeb's [or wannabes]:
stuck in the jungle
stuck in a house
dancing
ice dancing
singing
[tiddlywinks next?]

But I don't know though, TV property shows are soooo 2005 - don't ya think?

Anyway clashes with me MSE forums, so addictive :rotfl: :j :beer:

jenniferpa

There was one thing in the BBC blurb that struck me as ood. The reporter commented on the fact that buyers were shown only properties that were in their price range. Surely, that's a good thing, unless she meant the property prices varied depending on how much you could pay, or if you were only shown properties at the upper end of the range. Perhaps I misunderstood?

Jennifer

MORPH3US

NAR wrote:

Well done to you; but how many innocents out there would have fallen for that one - quite a few I would imagine.

My girlfriend for one! If I am honest, maybe I would have if I hadn't been an MSE regular at that point.

Luckily for us though, we had already stratched (possibly over stretched) ourselves at that point so knew we couldn't even think about going 1p over!

M