Mary Portas: Secret Shopper (Ch 4)

Caroline73_2

It definitely got me thinking. I'm hoping to sell my house this year and I cannot decided whether to let the EA do the viewings or do them myself. I've bought 4 properties before and I have viewed 3 with the owners, and one with EA present in the house but not showing me the property.

dizziblonde

Generally I've actually had decent experience with estate agents - the one we bought through was actually an utter gem in terms of pushing the sale through, chasing down errant vendor's solicitors and banging sense into them etc... but there IS a heck of a lot of smarm and codswallop throughout the entire industry to be honest... but if they cleared all the bull and twaddle out of RightMove ads - what would we have to laugh about on here?!

Doozergirl

clairehi wrote: »

ps did anyone else notice that the EA said the basement flat shown was "share of freehold" which they said was a good thing. is this actually a good thing? I thought that freehold flats were a bit of a legal minefield, and could be difficult to get a mortgage on?

A good estate agent will be able to tell you why it is a good thing. Share of freehold means that the flats all still have leases. They are important as they are legal agreements which afford all other flats in the building the right of 'support and protection' (slightly extreme example, you can't remove the roof from your top floor flat without having to answer to downstairs)

If they were truly freehold then they wouldn't own the ground underneath them or on top, which is important in a flat! It needs the support from below and the protection from above.

Doozergirl

Caroline73 wrote: »

It definitely got me thinking. I'm hoping to sell my house this year and I cannot decided whether to let the EA do the viewings or do them myself. I've bought 4 properties before and I have viewed 3 with the owners, and one with EA present in the house but not showing me the property.

If you have the confidence, then I would do it yourself.

I'm doing joint viewings with the EA, but he's wound me up a bit by calling bedroom five a 'good single' when it is almost identical to bedroom four which is set up as a double, with side tables, wardrobe and drawers and space to move around comfortably. Bedrooms five is 8 inches longer but 7 inches thinner. Overall it's 0.15m smaller. How does that make it a just a single? I've told him this and he still sells it as a single. It's actually set up as a TV Room for the kids which confuses some people as they look for another bedroom (as if all houses have upstairs lounges)... oh well.

If they all sold houses like the Martyn Gerrard guys were doing at the end, I'd be more than happy for them to do it.

poppysarah

Was it all fluff and flannel for the TV?
http://property.martyngerrard.co.uk/N11/New-Southgate/Brunswick-Grove/beds-4/property.vtx?p=23DC20EE-6218-4668-AA81-5A333E52D129

"is situated in a quiet turning"

The_Drama_Llama

I didn't see it, but my brother has told me that it featured the agent who sold my Dad's house for us last year...Veronica...apparently Mary called her 'a star'. She was good: got developers bidding against each other in the end to drive the price up.

red_devil

His hair was better suited to a teenager not a grown man.

Ive seen all 4 programmes now and they all follow the same format. Its good free advertising though for the company involved?

F_T_Buyer

poppysarah wrote: »

Was it all fluff and flannel for the TV?
http://property.martyngerrard.co.uk/N11/New-Southgate/Brunswick-Grove/beds-4/property.vtx?p=23DC20EE-6218-4668-AA81-5A333E52D129

"is situated in a quiet turning"

Now I've read it in context, I assume it means a quiet road and/or cul de sac?

poppysarah

F_T_Buyer wrote: »

Now I've read it in context, I assume it means a quiet road and/or cul de sac?

So what would be wrong with them saying that?

Wasn't that part of the point of the program?

Richard_Webster

What annoyed me was that Mary Portas thought that all estate agents did was show people around houses and flats - Simon Gerrard tried to point out that they did a lot of behind the scenes work to make sure the sale went through but she just conveniently ignored all that.