Tricks and Tactics used by Estate Agents

rilou81

One of the estate agents we got round didnt even view the whole house! Went round every room and picked out a negative point,when pushed to view what he had not seen said its ok!!

Then sat down gave us his rubbish script and told us that he would market the house at 20K under what all the others valued it at on a 110K house!!!

He told us they were putting another a few streets away on at the same price.

Needless to say we did not go with them, have since looked at the property they put on and its awful!! In need of total modernisation and on a busy main road............believe me out house is modern and on a nice street...........think he just wanted buyers queuing the block!! When I orogonally rang their shop a lady told me 'oh what a great street we will do anything to get you as it will sell!' I smell a rat xx

tootsmyboots

Last year when selling our house we had 3 agents round - one gave a value 10k over the stamp duty theshold, one 5k over, both looking to get the stamp duty threshold as a price. The third said to put it on at 15k under the stamp duty threshold. We ended up selling for 2k under the stamp duty threshold (and quite quickly for 2009 looking back) so I can only assume agent 3 wanted a super quick sale. Incidently they rang me a few months ago to ask if I had sold my house!

The agent we put my dad's house on with rang us with a first offer and really tried to pressure us to take it. I felt it was too low and was only an opener, but the EA really put the hard word on. So I went to my hair appointment and left it in the hands of my other half. By the time I had come out from having my hair done the offer was 15k more! So again, just goes to show the agent just wanted the sale closed and wasnt bothered about what we got.

Just a couple of example there.

dizziblonde

We actually seem to have had a very easy time viewing places as FTBs compared to some of these stories. Yes, we had the "we would strongly encourage you to talk to our mortgage broker" calls, but apart from one notable agency who bombarded us with phonecalls after we viewed one property (we were very honest, that it was a close second choice and we were in the progress of making an offer on our first choice one - he called every day for a month after that), very few mind games or rubbish.

Vendor's EA has actually been very helpful getting sense out of the solicitors to be honest! Hell hath no fury like a woman wanting her commission!

Mr_Thrifty

I had one estate agent visit and start comparing our place to a totally different property. Ours is a Victorian conversion, the other is a new build in a block of low-rise flats. Huffing and puffing, he proceeded to pick out every negative feature of our property that he could think of, then said "it's not even comparable to the XYZ apartments, therefore it's worth £X (about 25% less than I was reasonably expecting". When I pointed out that it also has some major benefits over the XYZ apartments, such as a garden, a short walk to a train station, share of freehold, and that it's in a conservation area rather than overlooking a dual carriageway and being next door to a school, he huffed and puffed even more and proceeded to state that these apartments however are "huge". When pressed, it transpires that they actually have 25sq.ft less floor space than ours. What a moron. He was clearly just going for the quick and easy sale, but if it hadn't been so obvious I might have actually fallen for it.

Any other examples of estate agents trying it on?

Loanranger

Mr_Thrifty wrote: »

Let's use this thread to expose the various tricks and tactics used by some estate agents when dealing with sellers as well as borrowers.

As a seller, I have noticed that agents will try and talk down your house hoping that you will agree to sell it cheaply. If you insist on a higher price, they will do virtually nothing to try and sell it if you're in a sole agency agreement with them, and will then tell you the reason you're not getting viewings is because the price is too high so you had better reduce the price (they just want an easy sell). When in fact the main reason is that they haven't been proactive in their marketing and they know that they have you as a sole agency client so can take their time and get you to feel anxious and start doubting yourself (going multi-agency however suddenly results in a huge number of viewings at exactly the same price!).

So, folks, please share details of any other tricks and tactics you know that some estate agents get up to!

But why would EAs want you to feel anxious? What's the gain for them?
They want to sell your property, that's what they're in business for, not some conspiracy against you personally.

johnthebar

<sebb> wrote: »

I had a very similar situation to you, 2 other offers on the first day it was on the market. I eventually stood my ground because I simply didn't believe it, and stuck with my original offer despite the agent telling me not to loose the flat of my dreams over a couple of grand. Of course my offer was accepted. I later had to pull out because the vendor had been less than truthful over a number of important issues. It's now about 7 months later and it still hasn't sold.

It seems I was right in suspecting that this is a trick that they pull on occasion.

The EA called this afternoon and as expected told me my offer wasn't high enough and that one of the other buyers have offered at our maximum. I asked about thier situation relative to ours as we are FTBs ready to go with a 25% deposit, so in a pretty good position especially in such an unstable market. It turns out that the best of these buyers are also FTBs but with a 40%+ deposit.

I told him that there was no point in us competing with that as they win hands down with that initial offer right at our maximum and the larger deposit.

He had a very good day on saturday with these "offers" and I congratulated him on that and said that we will be offering on the other place tomorrow.

Now all these other offers might be real and if they are we would have never got our offer accepted anyway as these buyers are in a stronger position. Lets see if he comes back to me though.

....to be continued

<sebb>

johnthebar wrote: »

It seems I was right in suspecting that this is a trick that they pull on occasion.

Mine refused to comment on what the other offers were, and whether they were higher or lower. Was clearly just trying to get me to increase mine. It won't always be a lie, sometimes there will be higher offers. You just need to decide whether you want to take the chance and stick with your original offer.

johnthebar

<sebb> wrote: »

Mine refused to comment on what the other offers were, and whether they were higher or lower. Was clearly just trying to get me to increase mine. It won't always be a lie, sometimes there will be higher offers. You just need to decide whether you want to take the chance and stick with your original offer.

I know that it isn't always a lie and I was suprised he gave the info away on that other offer. That info definitely made my mind up to stick with our original though, because if they are real and that's their position then we can't compete with that so this house isn't for us anyway.

timmyt

Mr_Thrifty wrote: »

Let's use this thread to expose the various tricks and tactics used by some estate agents when dealing with sellers as well as borrowers.

As a seller, I have noticed that agents will try and talk down your house hoping that you will agree to sell it cheaply. If you insist on a higher price, they will do virtually nothing to try and sell it if you're in a sole agency agreement with them, and will then tell you the reason you're not getting viewings is because the price is too high so you had better reduce the price (they just want an easy sell). When in fact the main reason is that they haven't been proactive in their marketing and they know that they have you as a sole agency client so can take their time and get you to feel anxious and start doubting yourself (going multi-agency however suddenly results in a huge number of viewings at exactly the same price!).

So, folks, please share details of any other tricks and tactics you know that some estate agents get up to!

ALWAYS avoid national chains, 'the corporates' and use local independent estate agents who know the pulse of the Town and trade on their name.

You will not go wrong.

Use some corporates, and you get overvaluing (which means they won't get the price, your house looks stale on rightmove after all the weeks it doesn't sell, and you end up getting a lower price after all than even the other valuations) and tied in to nasty contracts and virtually forced to use their conveyancers (who are not 'solicitors') at a very high price because the Agent gets a hefty cashback that you end up paying for.

Use local indepdent agents every time...you have been warned.

<sebb>

timmyt wrote: »

ALWAYS avoid national chains, 'the corporates' and use local independent estate agents who know the pulse of the Town and trade on their name.

You will not go wrong.

Use some corporates, and you get overvaluing (which means they won't get the price, your house looks stale on rightmove after all the weeks it doesn't sell, and you end up getting a lower price after all than even the other valuations) and tied in to nasty contracts and virtually forced to use their conveyancers (who are not 'solicitors') at a very high price because the Agent gets a hefty cashback that you end up paying for.

Use local indepdent agents every time...you have been warned.

Timmyt - I often agree with your sentiments (eg - I would never choose a solicitor or conveyancer based on price alone; for a purchase worth thousands, it's not worth the risk of something going wrong for a few pounds) but I cannot agree with your constant sweeping generalisations. Even local independent agents can be poor and some chains can be very good. The best bet is to get recommendations from people who have actually been through the process.