Estate Agents 'Priority Lists'

Parlous

eddddy wrote: »

It's just a game.

If you buy a house through an EA and use their mortgage broker - the EA gets 2 lots of fees... Sales commission plus Mortgage commission.

It's immoral - but that's why the EA will give you priority.

The EA will probably also try to persuade a vendor to accept your offer, rather than somebody else's, who isn't using their broker. (Even if your offer is lower than the other guy's, the EA will probably get more total commission, because of the mortgage.)

So if you want, you can play the game, talk to the mortgage advisor, sound interested, and suggest you will use them. Then change your mind once an offer is accepted.

The downside is that the EA gets to find out a lot about how much you can really afford, which might make offer negotiation more difficult for you.

This unfortunately makes a lot of sense! Thank you We have decided to pass on the third estate agent's priority list meeting, especially since they wanted to see our documents upfront and we are just not comfortable with showing our payslips and bank statements to someone we've never met!

ellie27

Agents will have some kind of list, but I do not think it gives you any advantage. A seller will want it properly marketed, on rightmove for everyone to see to get the best price.

Make sure you have rightmove alerts so that you get an email straight away if anything comes on the market that matches what you are looking for.

Davesnave

Agents have always had priority customers.

Thirty years ago, we agreed with friends that if we couldn't find anything better in a reasonably short time frame, we'd buy their house. At that point, they'd met with the agents, had photos done etc, but there was no internet and the property wasn't being marketed.

The agent they'd chosen, unaware of our deal, showed us "all the (relevant) properties" on their books. Neither they, who had the lion's share, nor any other agent had a better property than our friends', so we revealed our private deal.

Simultaneously, the agent who'd still not yet marketed our friends' house, began suggesting to them that we were very unreliable people, and also also pulling out houses they'd "just taken on" to show us. In other words, with nothing to lose, they were giving us viewings of houses they'd retained for preferred clients, at least for a few weeks, before they went live in the newspapers.

I can't say that the extra three or four houses, suddenly discovered in this manner, were better than those we'd already seen, as we were after a large back garden, which none had. However, we learned that "all our properties" really meant "all the properties we want to show you."

With the internet, I think those two weeks are more like two days now, and as others have said, many owners will want to see the Rightmove ad and have bodies through the door before accepting offers.

Nevertheless, one still occasionally sees someone on here crowing about selling to the first viewer, or in the newspaper ads saying, "Sold in three hours!"

I always think 'Sold far too cheaply, then!' but I'm just an old cynic.

AlexMac

The whole housebuying process is a lottery, and you can over-think it, but I'm with Eddie and Hoploz in agreeing you should 'play the EAs game' and 'grin and bear it' by going along, cheerfully (hypocritically?) with their charade.

Someone up the line in their organisation has adopted this particular business model; charitably interpreted as ensuring that potential buyers have the funds to proceed- a financial health test; more cynically because if even a few punters do use their financial services there will be a kickback for the firm... So they have to tick the boxes

We went through this when we last bought as it might just pay to be 'nice'- especially if it's a sellers' market locally, as it is round here. In fact, as well as being hyper reasonable to the EAs (nothing wrong with 'constructive creeping' hypocrisy) I blew some FAs off the pitch by turning up with a spreadsheet!

And as regards 'priority' EAs will bust a gut if it's in their interests; our last flat sold before it even hit the websites or the EA's window... to someone on our selling agent's hyper-important list; because he'd also just sold their house and was desperate for the commission... and at a great price.