Connells featured on local BBC consumer show for 'forcing' buyer to use their broker.

rosie383

Connells of Stopsley in Luton have just been featured on the consumer programme of BBC Three Counties Radio for 'forcing' a buyer to use their mortgage broker.
As we have seen on this forum so many times, they insisted that the vendor would only consider offers which were made by buyers who had used their mortgage broker. The fee was around £600, lots of back and forth with 'lost documents', and in the end they said their approved lender wouldn't give the mortgage.
The buyer then wrote to the company and copied in the vendor who was not happy. He then went off to Santander and got a mortgage approved within three hours and has now exchanged. The EA is refusing any refund of the arrangement fee.
The EA head office is, of course, denying that this would ever happen.

Happily the presenter of the show, Jonathan Vernon Smith is like a dog with a bone, and is not going to be fobbed off so easily. He put it out to the listeners to see if anyone else had had a similar experience and apparently the phones were all lit up with lots of people who had problems too.
JVS has also just written an article which will be in various village newspapers outlining what buyers' and vendors' rights are, and what they DON'T have to do when it comes to estate agents.

Incidentally, we did not have this problem with this estate agent when we offered on a property through them, but only because we were not buying with a mortgage. They are the ones however, who suggested that we drop our very patient buyer and resell through them.

Bluebirdman_of_Alcathays

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02k46l4#auto

lavalamp1

Must be a trend in Luton as another agent in the same area tried doing the same thing with me.

Saw property on Rightmove and contacted agent to make a viewing as you would do. Oddly mortgage advisor picked up and recommended that I see him before or after the viewing. I had no intention on doing so as I have a DIP.

After viewing the property on the weekend, made an offer on the Monday to be then told the vendor was not accepting any offers untill the financial situation of each buyer was vetted. EA told me to visit the mortgage advisor so my docs could be checked through. I refused and said, I have no intention of visiting them as I was organising my mortgage directly with the bank. Also my offer should be accepted or rejected before I make any commitments to visit them in the branch. Advised EA that my documents could be scanned and emailed to them.

Later in the afternoon EA manager contacts me to say he wants to see me in the branch, I refused and sent my documents via email.

30 mins later EA Manager contacts me to let me know that my offer was rejected as vendor prefers to sell to someone else even though they offered less than me. Also vendor and buyer had mutual friends. His response was very odd and could sense something else was going on the background.

Later that evening I posted a letter to the vendor informing them of my offer and strong buying position being a FTB etc. Have had no reply since from the vendor.

Seems to me that the vendor and EA agreed to sell the property to anyone that uses their in houses services perhaps in turn have a reduced commission fee.

rosie383

Somehow I doubt that it is solely a Luton problem. Your last point, Lavalamp, has made me think though. Perhaps that does happen, that they offer an incentive to an unsuspecting buyer. From what I have read on these forums though, when people have directly approached the vendor, most times the vendor is completely unaware.

lxpeanut

I wouldnt say they forced me to use their broker but they did lay it on thick that the seller would prefer it.I did end up going in to see them and she got me a cheaper mortgage and has been really good so far. I wish I'd have known they were notorious for this tactic before putting an offer in but to be honest it seems to be working out well for me.

kingstreet

It's corporate agents everywhere.

Be they Countrywide, Connells, Sequence or whoever, their "encouragement" of buyers to use their in-house mortgage services is very, rigorous, shall we say...?

Same goes for in-house conveyancing.

Mollyb

I used an EA's mortgage advisor when I had an offer accepted on a house. The EA thankfully didn't push the service on me but only suggested it. The house sale eventually fell through but the advisor was so brilliant we used him again for the house we're just about to complete on. Even though it was through a different EA.
As FTB's I would've been really intimidated if an EA had said we HAD to use their advisor though.

Lokolo_2

lxpeanut wrote: »

I wouldnt say they forced me to use their broker but they did lay it on thick that the seller would prefer it.I did end up going in to see them and she got me a cheaper mortgage and has been really good so far. I wish I'd have known they were notorious for this tactic before putting an offer in but to be honest it seems to be working out well for me.

I have had a very similar and positive experience to yours! Buying a flat through Taylors EA, they were insistent I see their mortgage broker (Countrywide) in branch, he is actually a pretty decent bloke, as I am buying a place with a low lease he was very good at finding a competetive mortgage for me as very few lenders would lend to me even though I had a big deposit.

As a FTB it has so far been a pain-free experience and I think the £299 fee was well worth it for the work my broker had to put in and for the convenience of being able to communicate with both the EA and the broker as they are in the same building!

Saying that, now that I know the process I would not use a broker in the future but it was very helpful to me at first when I had never gone through the process.

Madbags

We initially went to Connells FTB Centre, they offered a free 1 hour session. But the guy never laid it on thick or anything. He actually, perhaps unknowingly, gave us all the information we needed to approach the lender direct.


I did get a few emails from him after the meeting asking if we still were looking for a property and that was about it.


EDIT: I did forget to mention that the house we got the mortgage on was not with actually with Connells though, but another EA, who did mention "how amazing" their broker was, but did not force anything on us.

rosie383

I think there will be experiences such as yours which have been positive and helpful. I think the gripe that people have is whenever underhand tactics are used. When we bought as FTB and without the benefit of a resource such as this forum, we just blindly did what we were told, and it was a fast, easy process.
It does grate though when you know that you could get the same excellent service from a conveyancer/surveyor/broker without lining the EA pockets with hundreds of £ just for them making a phone call. Fine if you have no other way of getting the service, but particularly irritating when you have your own services all lined up and the EA sees their potential referral fees disappearing and uses sneaky measures to try to make you play ball.

gazter

To stop some people having to scan through three hours of radio broadcast its 2hrs 44 mins