Estate agents - weekend and evening viewings

student100

Bit of a rant. If you are a seller choosing which estate agent to list with, choose one who does viewings on weekends and weekday evenings.

As a buyer I've had a very frustrating experience trying to arrange to view a property where the agent will only do viewings on weekdays on office hours or Saturday mornings (but the Saturday mornings unsurprisingly get very booked up). And they wonder why things don't sell quickly!

copperjar

I know what you mean! I have had a similar rant myself. Can't think of any other service industry where the needs of customers don't seem to be considered at all. I have been waiting over a week for an EA to get back to me about a viewing (have now given up on it) and another one that point blank refused any weekends or evenings even when I said that would mean I couldn't view it at all then.

I do feel for some sellers if they knew what sort of service they are getting. I viewed a house today and every question I asked the agent was met with a "I don't know, I just do the Saturday viewings". And they wonder why it's been on the market for 4 months!

Tygermoth

We asked to view a property and were advised that viewing would only be done between 10 and 1400 mon to fri.

A few weeks later they called back and advised they were now doing a viewing on sat.

We ended up putting an offer in and are hopefully due to exchange and complete next week.

Had they not put sat viewings in we would never have viewed the house.

I appreciate the owner would find having all the viewings done while they were at work very beneficial.... but the agent did confirm they didn't get a single viewing as who wants to take a days leave to look?

I think it was the second ever viewing i went to there was a old dude doing the viewings. He was a disgrace, his opening speech was that he knew nothing - all offers and questions were to go directly to the agent. He went on to explain he only covered saturday viewings as did it for the money as he had to pay child support to his nasty biatch ex wife. He trailed us about moaning about his break up (short story - he cheated she 'unreasonably' took him to the cleaners) and in the end i knew more about his life than the house!

hazyjo

I'll be using an online agent and doing my own viewings.

Horses for courses...

Very mixed reviews on here from buyers as to whether they prefer the EA or vendor to show them round.

I'm yet to meet an EA who knows very much about the property, and they rarely send anyone with a bit of noddle to do Sat viewings as they don't usually have a full team in.

Jx

student100

In this case it's a vacant property and the vendor is not local so we need the agent to do viewings.

It's the complete opposite with the agent we are using to sell our house. They don't have special weekend viewing people, all their regular team do a rota of shifts so they all take turns to work weekends (and have days off in the week). They are open all day Saturday and something like 11-4 Sunday. I think the majority of our viewings have been on a Sunday!
Maybe it depends on location, we are in a city and 7 day opening seems common here, we're looking in a more rural area and the agents seem to be a bit behind the times!

Bonfire_Bride

I was never there when we had viewings...found it awkward when we viewed with the seller mulling around and trying not to get in the way lol.

We had a great EA who would do viewings up until 6:45 and weekends.

I completely agree with you.

tykesi

We're suffering this from the other side of the coin. We engaged an agent who said they would take care of the viewings, we were happy with this so went ahead. the house has been on the market for just under three weeks, one viewing in the first conducted by the agent. The second viewing was at 8pm due to the viewers' availability, we offered to do that one since it was so late. We now have four viewings tomorrow booked in and due to lack of anybody from the agency being available we are doing all four.

Very frustrating and you do wonder why you are paying all that money. That said we want the house to sell so rather than put off potential viewers we are doing them.

googler

copperjar wrote: »

Can't think of any other service industry where the needs of customers don't seem to be considered at all.

Who are the EA's 'customers'?

The sellers, who pay them, or the viewers/buyers/casual enquirers, who take up most of the EA's time and effort, but who don't pay them a bean? Discuss.

American 'Realtors' will move heaven and earth for both buyer and seller, in some cases being on call 24/7, or somewhat close to it. However, you'll pay them something in the region of 6% of the sale price for the privilege.

googler

tykesi wrote: »

you do wonder why you are paying all that money.

What have you paid them so far?

student100

The end customer is the buyer. Although the buyer doesn't pay the agent directly it's their money that pays the agents bill. Just like if you buy Heinz beans from Tesco, you pay Tesco and Tesco pay Heinz. As the end customer you still have an interest in Heinz producing a good quality product even if you don't pay them directly.

Torry_Quine

Surely the home owner can do viewings in the evening and weekends?