Getting on EAs priority list

FelinePrincess

Hi,

I keep hearing that when looking to buy a house it's a good idea to make youself known to estate agents so when properties matching your criteria come up you are one of the first to know.

I'm a FTB with an AIP so I thought today I'd go to the various local EAs and explain what I'm looking for and ask them to let me know if anything comes up.

I went into an ea and explained I'm looking to buy in this area, I haven't seen anything of interest on their website and could i let them know what I'm looking for so they can let me know if anything comes up. The man wasnt very keen and said its best to keep an eye out on right move. I pointed out that I am doing that but many houses are get listed already marked as stc and I feel I'm missing out. He reluctantly put my info on a form, he didnt seem very interested in finding out what kind of properties I'm interested in and tbh I'll be surprised if I hear from them.

Did I just get unlucky with a grumpy ea or am I doing something wrong here?

ReadingTim

You may have got a grumpy bloke on a bad day but to him you're just some random who's walked in off the street wanting special or priority treatment! Obviously he could have been a bit more pro-active by treating you as a sales opportunity rather than an irritant, but that's his loss.

I would therefore suggest that you need to establish yourself as a credible buyer, which means more than simply dropping into the shop and saying hello - you need to start viewing properties they have on their books, be honest (without revealing too closely) your finances and speed with which you could proceed (ie if you have a notice period on your current place) - silly as it seems, you almost have to earn their trust before they get to the stage where they're calling you before the ad goes out on Rightmove.... this doesn't happen instantly, and you may have to view some non-suitable properties, but hopefully it'll be worth it in the long run.... best of luck!

Dan-Dan

if the market where you are is brisk , that`s another possible reason for the (unacceptable) poor customer service

ognum

FelinePrincess wrote: »

Hi,

I keep hearing that when looking to buy a house it's a good idea to make youself known to estate agents so when properties matching your criteria come up you are one of the first to know.

I'm a FTB with an AIP so I thought today I'd go to the various local EAs and explain what I'm looking for and ask them to let me know if anything comes up.

I went into an ea and explained I'm looking to buy in this area, I haven't seen anything of interest on their website and could i let them know what I'm looking for so they can let me know if anything comes up. The man wasnt very keen and said its best to keep an eye out on right move. I pointed out that I am doing that but many houses are get listed already marked as stc and I feel I'm missing out. He reluctantly put my info on a form, he didnt seem very interested in finding out what kind of properties I'm interested in and tbh I'll be surprised if I hear from them.

Did I just get unlucky with a grumpy ea or am I doing something wrong here?

Just to be a bit argumentative, what makes you feel you ate better than other candidates for properties?

have you got cash or mortgage organised?
have you already sold a property.
Are you keen to move quickly
Are you happy to take on a less than perfect property, short lease, less popular area.

Or, are you just an average punter? if there are plenty of average punters about and you are just another one then rude and arrogant EAs will treat you badly.

make yourself special

Out,_Vile_Jelly

Ask to view several properties, even if they don't match all your criteria on paper. Be as flexible as you can about viewing times. Give prompt, constructive feedback. Have a solicitor lined up and check your paperwork is ready to go (eg proof of ID).

FelinePrincess

Thanks everyone for your replies, they have all been very helpfull. I haven't booked any viewing before as I've only just started looking and the only houses of interest to me have already been sold stc but perhaps I'll try viewing a few which are close to my criteria

ognum wrote: »

Just to be a bit argumentative, what makes you feel you ate better than other candidates for properties?

have you got cash or mortgage organised?
have you already sold a property.
Are you keen to move quickly
Are you happy to take on a less than perfect property, short lease, less popular area.

Or, are you just an average punter? if there are plenty of average punters about and you are just another one then rude and arrogant EAs will treat you badly.

make yourself special

I don't feel that I'm "better" than other candidates, I just want to have a fair chance to see newly available properties, which other people seem to be buying before they are even listed on rightmove.

I have a mortgage in principal, FTB with no property to sell and as I'm not paying for my current accommodation I don't need to worry about tenancy notice. I am keen to move quickly on the right house.

I'm not look for special treatment, I just want a chance on the properties that are getting sold before I even know about them

kingstreet

Tell them you'll use their mortgage advisor, buy their insurance and their conveyancing services, if only they'll "hotbox" you so you're advised as soon as anything new comes in.

You don't actually have to buy any of those services though.

EatTheRitch

An EA's priority list !

Oh dear.
The EA will just advertise on right move like any other. The days of "registering" with an EA are long gone with the rise of the inter-web. (No matter what some old timers might think.)

True, an EA might give you a phone call if they think you might give them a very quick sale (or buy other services as kingstreet says), but they won't hold back on putting it online at the same time.

Nobody gets special treatment my friend.
The EA just wants his commission ASAFP.

Creux

Hi,

Long-time lurker here that registered to share my experiences on this. We are FTBs in the process of buying a house right now, but we began looking at the start of the year.

We'd been planning this for around a year now, keeping an eye on the market while we built up our deposit, so it gave us time to think about how to approach it. Like you, one thing we'd noticed is that houses would come up immediately as STC on RightMove and Zoopla, which meant there was obviously another way of getting in beforehand. To us this meant registering with all of the estate agents, but we needed to stand out from the crowd, so here's what we did:

• Bought a £7 "burner" phone from Tesco to register with, based on the idea that when we're done we can toss it away and not be harassed after we had found a house
• Setup a joint email address to register with, again so that our real addresses weren't spammed and to keep everything separate
• Created a simple A4 summary of who we were and what we wanted. We tried to play it to our advantage by advertising what we thought were desirable features in a prospective buyer. E.g. FTB, Deposit on hand, Chain-free, AIP, ready to proceed immediately, etc. We printed out about 15 of these, one for each agent.
• Going to every agent in the area we were interested in, sitting down, handing over the A4 summary and explaining exactly how good our position was.
• Setup our real phones to receive emails from the joint account, that had been registered with the agents.

What we found while registering was mixed. Most agents explained that they didn't have "priority lists" anymore, as the advent of the internet had made it less relevant. Instead, they explained that to make it more fair they ensured everyone who was registered with them would get an email about a new property a day or so before it came up on RightMove or Zoopla. This corroborated in our experience, and indeed we got many emails over the 7 weeks before they appeared on other sites. Some agents would ring us from time to time, but nothing to note.


Most of the agents were very receptive when we handed over the summary sheet, as it had all of the information they needed to register (i.e. phone, email, house type, area, etc.) We got business cards from nearly all of them. A few agents weren't very receptive, but I place that on them not us. For example, the offices were dirty, they looked totally uninterested, etc. Their loss.


In the end we found somewhere after 6 weeks of serious searching and we're going through the whole mortgage process now. The agent remembered who we were ("the ones with the sheet") and really played our position to the sellers, who accepted our offer and took it off the market after it only being on three days. Good times!

cattie

Whenever I've bought and sold I've always had people viewing before house hits market proper from people registered with the ea handling the sale. In the same way, as a buyer I've got first nod at any new property coming onto the market.

If the ea really has no interest in keeping a list of prospective viewers/buyers in an effort to get the house sold asap, then the service that they offer is very poor indeed.

One house I sold a few years ago sold within just a few short hours of getting ea round & agreeing to list with them. Due to the ea promptly contacting those on the books who were registered as looking for a property in my area within the price range of my house. Somebody viewed that afternoon & made full asking price offer almost straight away to ea.

Ether_4

I found my house by walking pass the road. Like cattie, it was not yet even on the EA's website, viewed and placed the bid the very same day. So like last time I did alot of driving around the roads I wanted the house on and called up the EA the following day and now in the process of buying and selling my place