agents (Foxtons) lying about location

ognum

Presumably buyers go and look at house before they buy!

vectistim

As I understand it, certain discount airlines are rather more creative than any estate agent when it comes to location.

annie123

kcseb wrote: »

OK admittedly it doesn't affect me as I know what I'm looking for (small time BTL guy and I do my research), but is there any recourse for Foxtons mislabelling where properties are? For unsuspecting victims about to get on the ladder, it's so unscrupulous to dupe people like that on the biggest purchase of their lives. It's also part of the reason prices are rising so fast in upto now 'undesirable' areas, it just isn't a healthy practice.

There's one they've listed now in East London, they're listing it as being in an area which is a good mile away (and far more expensive, esp. because of Crossrail). I mean it's not even stretching the truth, it's an outright lie.

Recourse to complain...Right Move, NAEA, Foxtons themselves?

Providing you are absolutely sure it is not in the area they say, rather than public perception of where the area starts and ends then they are covered by the property misdescriptions act.

Your first port of call is to the estate agent to point out that it's in the wrong location, it could be a typing error. Do this via email to have a record and allow 36 hours for the website to be update.
If it is not you can then report it to trading standards.

An example of how it could cause problems:
For example, I'm in London and want to move to Liverpool. I've been told which areas are convenient for me to get to work due to transport links. I spot a property and agent details say it's in the area I want to be. Don't fancy a day trip from here so I book a day off work with next day as my day off and a night in a B&B.
When I get there it is obvious that it is not with the area I wanted, but 1 mile away or a 20 min walk. This has costs me time and money.
As I have been inconvenienced and had costs I would succeed in suing the agent for my expenses and lost time at work.

The agent should change it quickly if it is wrong as both the person who took the description can be held accountable and the company could both be prosecuted.

ed110220

I think the problem is that location is often ambiguous. Some 'areas' have no legal or administrative existence and only exist in terms of common usage. Other times the common usage doesn't coincide with the electoral ward or local authority area - for example my electoral ward and 'common usage' location have the same name, but the former is much larger than the latter.

ACG

It happened to an area close to where i live.
One agent started it, then the other joined in (we all laughed at the time how houses were really in a bad area but being advertised at the nice bit), now everyone knows that area as the posh area... mental!

What does it matter though? You know where the area is, chances are so does everyone else. So why worry about it.

ed110220

It's not like if a travel agent sells you a holiday to Spain and sends you to Portugal instead, because often there's no legal border to the areas the estate agents talk of.

Prothet_of_Doom

In the 1980's one EA printed their own map of Coventry, and some of the more well known dodgy areas, were renamed.
The Same in Brum. In fact my girlfriend (now wife) and 4 student nurses, rented a house in what they were told was Edgbaston, but was actually the Kurb Crawling Bit of Balsall Heath

phoebe1989seb

anselld wrote: »

So, you wanted to manipulate the location description to improve the marketing of your property .... but you don't like Foxtons doing so! Hmmmm.

Not at all. We merely wanted the name of the nearest (very dodgy ) neighbourhood left off our property details.

For example - our house was of Tudor origins but had been dismantled in the 1930s and rebuilt in a semi-rural setting close to a village. Over the years a modern estate had grown up around our house (which we purchased in 2007) and that estate (let's call it Georgian estate) was highly regarded amongst the local population whereas the village (let's call it Sunny Seaside Village) had acquired a bad reputation. There was a local town (within two miles) that our estate was seen as a satellite of. We merely wanted our EA to list our property as being on the Georgian Estate of ***** town.......simples

Not manipulation of location but merely leaving out the name of the nearby dive......

Anyone locally looking to buy would know this anyway, but we were more concerned with putting off buyers from outside the area who would have heard the bad reputation of the village.

As it happened it made no difference as we accepted an offer within two weeks in an area where most larger/character properties take an average two years to sell

Prothet_of_Doom

A freind told me and my wife, not to buy a house in Northfield, so we ended up driving around Weoley Castle, for 2 weeks before we realised that they meant "that" part of Northfield.

bosseyed

Every estate agent in Bristol does this. They invariably list properties in Southmead (less desirable area) as being in Westbury-on-Trym (very desirable area) as the two share a boundary.

Generally, if I can afford the house claiming to be in Westbury then it means its in Southmead.