What is your most scandalous Estate Agent experience?

Financial_Savvy

What is your most scandalous Estate Agent experience?

Discuss.

PasturesNew

After going in to go onto their list to find out what they had for sale, to be sneered down upon (he was well over 6') with the phrase "And how are you going to pay for that??" followed by "Of course, you realise lenders don't like lending to single women don't you". This was in about 2000.

Another one, 2007, I went in to ask what an EA had on their books only to be told "Keep an eye on our website", without any attempt to take my details or smooze me.

mumps

We were looking for a four bed detached house. EA contacted me to say just had one come on his books, partly modernised. Went to see it and it didn't have stairs! When we told him it wasn't what we wanted ( even if it had stairs it wasn't right but with disabled husband a ladder wasn't going to work) he asked why and I said, "Well it didn't even have stairs." His reply was, "Well you never said you wanted stairs." He even checked out details and read out, "Four bedrooms, double garage, downstairs loo." and he was right, we never mentioned stairs, or a roof, or doors, or glass in the windows.

danothy

Lord above ... too good already ... am subscribing to this one.

POPPYOSCAR

Told us that if we payed a non- refundable deposit the property would be taken off the market and guaranteed to be ours, so we did.

All going through then got phone message saying he needed to talk to us as a matter of extreme interest to us. Could not get through to him until the monday so spent all weekend agonizing what it was about.

Then we were told by him that another party had made an offer and did we want to increase ours.

In the end we had to increase our offer(our solicitor was brilliant and exchanged contracts the same day). EA then came back and said someone wanted to buy the contract from us for £10,000 he seriously thought we would sell and kept on(,my OH wanted to punch him at this point) he then 'threatened' to tell the vendor and tried to make us feel that the vendor would pull out of the contract.

Our solicitor was of the 'old school' and he did not like what the EA was doing one bit. We think we only ended up getting the property because of his efforts and we are to this day very grateful to him and feel he earned every penny of his fee.

dacouch

A friend of mine was renting privately from a landlord, they bought a house through an estate agent and the vendor decided to take over the balance of the purchasers lease on the rented house.

The estate agent tried insisting the sale could only go through if the landlord allowed them to take over the management of the privately rented house.

The landlord, buyer and vendor all told him where to go but he kept on trying to force them until they really told him where to get off

Doozergirl

Small local agent, marketing strategy circa 1972, only really sell 'deceased' estates. Auction property.

We tried to make an offer before the auction as it had been on the open market previously and fallen through. It was a good offer, over guide. Agent said, quite aggressively, that they would categorically not take an offer. We asked him to call the vendors to please check. He did it there and then. "I have a couple in my office, they want to make you an offer. I've told them that you will not be considering offers. Please confirm that you will not be considering any offers at all." Sigh. He puts phone down and indeed confirms that they will not be considering offers and tells us to leave.

Auction evening comes (so we're past working hours here) and the price goes a little over what we we prepared to pay, fair enough, to a man in a hi-vis jacket. At the end of the auction, I watch him immediately walk out of the room! H followed him and watched him get into his car and drive off. I was one of the last to leave the room, just watching what was happening (just the other 2 buyers signing for the properties they had bought). Asked about the missing buyer and was told to phone the office in the morning for an update.

The next morning, 9am sharp, we call the office to put our offer forward again to be told that because the 'buyer' had gone, it had sold to someone immediately after the auction for 25% less than we were offering...

Just [STRIKE]bent[/STRIKE] bizarre.

retepetsir

FTB only 6 months ago....went in to Connells, big mistake.

EA: What's your budget?
Moi: £170k max (shouldn't have told him this, we were only interested in one property they had)
EA: How about 'this' (3-bedroom house is rough area, £200k), 'this' (2-bedroom flat by motorway, £195k), or 'this' (3-bedroom house in bad area again and nowhere near public transport, £210k).
Moi: No thank you, just the details on the property we asked about please
EA: You can easily afford a £220k property on your income, how about 'this' (shows another property at £220k)
Moi: No thanks
EA: You must make an appointment to see our inhouse financial advisor before we can show you round the property you wanted to see
Moi: No thanks, we've already received independent advice
....and it went on

Following that first experience, we had endless phonecalls from them!

The_Drama_Llama

I recently had an EA show me round a house which was up for about £300k. Dreadful place, needed loads of work and was right by a busy main road. EA starts extolling its values and utters the immortal phrase 'perfect for first time buyers'. I pointed out that at £300k you'd need £50k+ as a deposit and an £80k pa income in the current lending landscape...he was shocked and asked several times if those figures were really true. Breathtaking...

Brodiebobs

first time buyers 2004 50k (were oop north!) budget, taken to see lots circa 65k, once told to get my 'rents in to see their advisor about a remortgage so they could lend us the difference.

We were mostly competing with BTL'ers at the time, the estate agents were on first name terms we'd lost out on that many to them.... one house i was showed round with two other middle aged couples both looking for buy to let, it was in an area i'd never (dared) looked but was in my price bracket the estate agent wispered "if your interested and willing to offer asking price i'll put the other two off..." i said yeah i'm interested"... she went on to tell the couples they would struggle to get rent due to the high crime and anti-social behaviour rate in the area as well as the bail hostel two doors down, that on a previous visit her collegues windscreen had been smashed, and it would need a "comprehensive" renovation to bring it up to letting standards, including replacing the windows as they had all being nailed shut, that vendor had advised them not to switch on the electric and gas due to previous "issues".... all in front of me, needless to say i didnt offer!

Felicity

When we were looking for our current house we came across an Estate Agent we hoped to put our trust in.

She was called Ruth, she took a fancy to my husband. After a while she asked him to call her 'Roo', after a while longer she asked him to call her 'R'. very strange. We didn't buy a house from her.