estate agent not keen on me dealing directly with vendor?

rammster

Guys I am a FTB.

My last deal fell through because the estate agent miscommunicated my current condition to the vendor. To me all estate agents are scumbages , and I am yet to meet a decent honest person. This may be due to the unregulated nature of the profession. Yesterday I lost another deal , as I had a competitive bid (higher of the two ) but was gonna have none of their solicitors/Mortgage advice/other products they wanted to sell to me. (I have an independednt financial advisor)

Which brings me to the question . Should I insist at the point of making an acceptable offer that I should liaise directly with the vendor rather than letting the estate agent to keep on playing the middle man / or should i call it the middle FOX.

Is it my right to demand direct contact with the vendor , or is it just an option that I should 'politely ' request the estate agent to offer to the vendor.

clutton_2

can you ask for another viewing in person and talk to the vendor in person

JennyP

I had a sale nearly fall through a couple of years back.
A chap put in a low offer but said he'd complete within three weeks so I thought, ok, I'll accept the low offer.
Three weeks later, he hadn't even done a survey.
I accepted a higher offer then off someone else.
She was also very slow at organising anything, so when a month later, the first chap came back with an offer of the asking price, I agreed. He asked the estate agent to pass on his mobile number to me and we then talked direct. The sale went through smoothly in about a month and whenever either of us were frustrated with the agents or with our solicitors, we called each other for a moan and to discuss tactics!
I would always try to personal contact in future - it's harder to let someone down if you've got their mobile number in your phone!
Could you ask to view the property again when the vendor is at home and then quietly suggest swapping numbers?

owned_by_2_Siamese

Hi Rammster, not sure of how its supposed to work, but I'm in a nightmare chain. The buyer of my property actually told the agent he did not want direct contact with me, and on the house we are buying the seller said that they wanted all communication through the agent. Given that Chinese Whispers is the deathnell for housing chains this hasnt been good. On Friday I discovered that the first buyer in the chain still hasnt got a mortgage offer - 4 months after their offer was accepted ! As a consequence the chain is going to collapse today. What I've learn't:
1. Going through the agents mortgage service means the buyer has more knowledge quicker of any problems (I havent gone through this route - but neither has the guy who cant getthe mortgage so we would have known there was a problem more quickly) I would think twice now about any offer where the agent didnt control the mortgage application process. (As a seller!)
2. Get the contact details of the seller - arrange to go round once your offer is in and offer them yours - you stand a better chance than with the agent (data protection and all that cr**)
3. Trust no body, especially the agents - they see £££ commission and thats it!

Hope it goes well for you - the system is stacked against common sense at every opportunity. I'm off to see how much of the chain we can salvage and which one of us goes back on the market!

Richard_Webster

Most of the time it is best to establish direct contact with a seller or a buyer.

If you need to negotiate then it is better to sit down with the people and explain where you are coming from. You can broach a subject gradually and see how they react. Using an agent as an intermediary you are forced to put an apparently fixed position to him to relay to the other party who then receives it and spends time trying to work out what's behind it, and can suspect all kinds of things. They then fire back a response salvo via the agent and you then wonder what's behind that!

If you speak direct you can allay fears virtually immediately as you speak, so an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust that can arise through third party intervention can be avoided.

In most cases therefore I would advise direct contact, but there are some sellers who are genuinely fearfull of the whole process and are frightened of this kind of direct contact and do prefer the agent to shield them. If that is what they want then you will have to go along with it.

As a conveyancing solicitor I believe the information given in the post to be useful but I accept no liability except to fee-paying clients

maninthestreet

Ramster,

This sounds like a classic case of a conflict of interest for the EA - they want to make money from both the vendor and the buyer, and can fail to act transparently when a buyer, such as yourself, has made the highest offer, but has chosen not to purchase any of the buyer services the EA has on offer.

In your particular case, I would write little note to the vendor, and pop it throught his letterbox. State in the note you are disappointed that he chose not to take up your offer for whatever the amount was you offered, and widh him luck with his house sale. This should set the cat amongst the pigeons if the EA had been trying to pull a fast one.

courtjester

owned_by_2_Siamese wrote:

1. Going through the agents mortgage service means the buyer has more knowledge quicker of any problems (I havent gone through this route - but neither has the guy who cant getthe mortgage so we would have known there was a problem more quickly) I would think twice now about any offer where the agent didnt control the mortgage application process. (As a seller!)

It is important to understand that this involves a conflict of interest - the agent's interest against everyone else's and there are also legal implications.

It is not good for buyers to use the agent's mortgage service because (1) it's probably not the best deal even though the agent will claim it is and (2) it is disadvantageous for the buyer's financial position to be known in detail by the agent during negotiations - in fact it is illegal for the agent's mortgage advisors to pass details of the buyer's financial information back to the agent as this is supposed to be confidential between the buyer and the advisor.

The agent is legally obliged to inform the vendor if they are providing mortgage services to their buyer (owing to the conflict of interest). Unscrupulous agents may discriminate against buyers who do not use their services (because they don't make so much commission) - hence potentially an agent could recommend a lower offer be accepted by the vendor from someone using their mortgage service, that the agent will make more money out of, even if this is not the best deal for their client. There are plenty of instances of agents telling buyers their offer won't be passed on in such cases - even though this is breaking the law.

rammster wrote:

Should I insist at the point of making an acceptable offer that I should liaise directly with the vendor rather than letting the estate agent

You can't - a buyer has no say over the way that an agent operates as he is not the client - the vendor is. It is up to the vendor to decide how the agent should work and if the vendor says no contact, then the buyer has no right to challenge this.

On the other hand, it is the vendor's right to deal directly with their buyer if they wish - too many agents try to bully their clients into only dealing through the agent (again because they are trying to loofk after their own interests instead of the client's).

I think it is highly useful to have direct contact between buyer and seller in order to avoid the problems associated with dealing through agents.

owned_by_2_Siamese

Hi Courtjester,
I agree - I would not use the mortgage service of the agent, however as a seller it is clear to me that had the first buyer in the chain used their service I wouldn't be in the predicament I'm in now! (i.e no-one knew that these people were struggling/couldnt get a mortgage - it allowed a 'fob-off' period)

Its a case of as a seller it helps - but as a buyer - well I wuuldn't do it !
Catch 22!!!

pingu79

I would never recommend using a mortgage advisor from the same estate agency you are buying from.

I used one supposedly (a seperate company) to the estate agents next door.

We then found a house that we loved that was on the market with the estate agents next door. They were very pushy in negotiations and we ended up really offering over the odds for it's true market value.

Later on in the conveyancing process I found out that broker and estate agent hasd been talking directly with each other right the way through the process.

The survey turned up all sorts of hidden nasty's so we didn't buy in the end, I never bothered viewing any other houses with the same agent after as my bargaining position was so weak.

RufusFrog_2

I think it is a good idea to meet your sellers, tell the agent you want a second viewing while they are in so you can ask about stuff only they will know such as neighbours and schools etc. Then you can try and gauge how a direct line of contact would work out.

However I have not given any contact details to my buyer and seller this time round simply because last time I ended up with my buyer, who seemed a perfectly nice individual on the viewings, ringing me up at work and shouting abuse at me because we weren't moving according to his timetable. I ended up a nervous wreck and consumed quite a lot of valium as a result and wasn't going to risk this again.

So there are pros and cons both ways. We had an issue this time round with our buyers apparently falling off the face of the earth when everyone else was ready to exchange contracts. I did seriously consider hand delivering a note asking them to contact the agent/solicitor and tell them what their position was, but fortunately they got back in touch without me doing this.

Rick62

I agree you should never use the mortgage broker linked with the EA. The EA represents the seller of the property, if the EA can find out about your detailed financial position it aids their negotiating position and damages yours. Yes, in law, under data protection and FSA etc the broker should not share any details with the EA, even if associated, but in the real world who believes that the broker would not at least give an indication to the EA?

What you should do is use your own independant broker, but get a lenders agreement in principle (AIP), its a one page in principle mortgage offer, and when you make an offer don't just say 'I offer £200k' , say, 'I offer £200k, I have a cash deposit for £30k and I have a mortgage offer for the balance of £170k, as attached'. And attach a copy of the AIP.