I don't trust my estate agent

worried1959

I have just caught my agent out in a direct lie. I suspected he was trying to pressure me to reduce the price to get an easy sale through but now I know he is prepared to tell at least one (possibly several) direct lies to achieve this.

The prospect of allowing him to manage the sale at all when I don't feel I can trust him an inch is not a happy one as the relationship has to rely on some degree of trust simply because so many issues can arise and there is the potential to lose a lot of money if he is not honest.

I am under contract for several weeks. The consequence of this is that I am unable to market or sell the house through another agent and I don't feel at all confident in proceeding with this one.

I can try to catch him out on email but so far the challenge is that this is all verbal communication. Any thoughts?

SG27

Good luck finding one that doesn't lie!!

JQ.

What was the lie?

omnasia

If you move to another agent how do you know they won't lie too ? If you are really not happy then change agents as soon as you can. This is why estate agents have a bad reputation but what we might see as lies, they probably see as selling techniques. Hard to comment when we don't know exactly what they have lied about.

Better_Days

As it is a fairly quiet time of year for house sales I would wait out the contract with your EA and then change to an agent that you feel more comfortable with. Although EA's have a poor reputation that is no excuse for lying.

You can start 'interviewing' some alternative agents now. It is hard work, as some will put a considerable amount of pressure on you to sign up with them.

Ask around, personal recommendation can be useful as part of the process in choosing an EA. This is likely to be your biggest asset. Spend some time choosing an EA. Get a few round, including some local independents. My EA has been great, but it took a long while to find her. It is not always easy to sort the wheat from the chaff. EA's send out their slick sales people to reel you in, but the real work is done with the marketing, viewings, negotiation and sales progression, and the staff who do this work are not always knowledgeable or professional. You do not necessarily get what you pay for with EA's, the most expensive EA that I had round to do a valuation also offered, in my view, the poorest service, because their staff were not up to scratch.

WATTY1978

Its so hard but there are decent ones out there. when i was getting valuations i had one ea under value the property by almost £15k. i had done my research and knew it was very low. i was willing to advertise at a reasonable level just to sell but not as low as he suggested. anyway i went with the one who gave a valuationil in the middle of the others and the one which sounded more resonable and as a result i got full asking price within six weeks.

I guess on the other hand it may have still been undervalued but i got the quick sale and the price i wanted.

its worth shopping around next time. good luck!

Goldiegirl

It certainly is worth shopping around for an agent.

It's been a long time since I moved, but when I did, I got various valuations of my house, and also used the agents visit to my house to make a judgement on their enthusiasm for selling the house.

Bearing in mind I had a good idea of the market, as I was working in the lending department of a bank, I quickly weeded out the ones who gave lower valuations - often much lower than prices realised by similar properties. Also, those were often the agents who seemed disinterested.

I eventually picked an agent who valued the property at a price I was happy with, but mainly because he showed enthusiam, and appeared to actually want to sell the house. I felt I could have a good working relationship with him, and he sold the house at the full asking price a few weeks later.

BertieUK

As many of you say it is not easy which AE to choose in the first place to sell your property.

In our area we have around eight EA operating, looking at the number of properties they have on their books they are so varied that I wonder how, some of them can give a top class service with the number of properties that they are handling.

Just to give you an example the numbers run as follows for the eight EA

Properties for sale -326 - 182 - 148 - 67 - 60 - 59 - 46 - 14
Av Sale List'AgeWks 46 - 36 - n/a - 24 - 46 - 29 - 28 - 36

So looking at the above figures which one do you choose?

Its like asking what is the length of a piece of string, or is it?

Taking into account the one with 326 properties how can the staff be expected to deliver a good service?

We will be putting our property onto the market around late Feb early March, any input will be greatfully received.

jobdone1

Does anyone trust them !!!

Hoof_Hearted

You could try an online agent and do the negotiations yourself.

BertieUK

Hoof_Hearted wrote: »

You could try an online agent and do the negotiations yourself.

My ideal would be to appoint an EA that I felt comfortable with and who was eager to sell the property and to quote a respectful charge for doing the work.

We will be giving it all a great amount of thought.

My wife would feel very comfortable doing the viewings but is not convinced, as yet, as to how good the on-line agent would be, if we chose to use one, in handling the appointments and clients.