Purple Bricks warning

freccle

My daughter wants to sell her house and move to a larger one. It will be the first house seh has ever sold and is a single divorcee with 2 children. She saw the Purple Bricks advert and got them to come and value the house. They valued it quite high and were very anxious that sign up. They had a list of comparable estate agent fees and were competitive. They gave her the impression that all estate agents require up front fees. She didn’t know any different and to be honest, it’s so long since I sold a house I wouldn’t really have known either. What Purple Bricks do though is sign you up for a loan from Close Brothers Ltd which pays the full fees for the sale of the house up front then when the house sells or after 11 months if it doesn’t, you then owe £1000+ to Close Brothers. My daughter didn’t realise this – the agent steam rollered her into signing up. It has been on the market for 5 months and the service from Purple Bricks has been appalling. It takes 4 or 5 calls or texts to get a response from the agent. 2 sales have already fallen through, one after she’d paid for a survey on the house she wanted , which she of course subsequently couldn’t buy losing £700+. For the first month the house was described wrongly and it took about 10 phone calls to get the description changed on the ads
Viewers have turned up to see the house without my daughter being notified. Others have cancelled without her being notified. The whole thing has been a total shambles. Now she wants to move to another estate agent but she still owes the loan to Close Brothers which has no bearing on how the estate agent has performed. :mad:
Whilst I’m sure this is probably not illegal, it’s certainly immoral and I’d advise anyone thinking of selling their house to give Purple Bricks a wide berth

Doozergirl

The online agents like Purple Bricks all charge an upfront fee which is cheaper than high street agents. They are able to do this as everyone pays for their own marketing, it isn't just the successful sales paying for the unsuccessful ones. There's nothing immoral about it.

Only having one agent out in the first place is never a good idea for several reasons. You want to feel confident about the marketing price and about the people you're dealing with and you want to compare fees and service levels.

Your daughter did no due diligence. That does not make Purple Bricks practice wrong.

Shakin_Steve

There's nothing immoral about it but, from all of the posts I've read, they are pretty crap.

saajan_12

It’s never right to pressure people into buying/signing up especially in your own home so I do understand! It’s also subconsciously easier to sign up to something when you don’t have to pay upfront, even you’re guaranteeing to pay later. However there are a few lessons here so your daughter will be better equipped next time

* don’t believe what salesmen say, check out the comparable figures, how it works

* read & understand everything you agree to – you can always say you’ll think about it and come back, they’ll most likely still be happy to sign you up. Just because you’re not handing over cash, you may not be able to walk away unscathed.

* the house buying process expects you to be an informed party: that’s doing your own research / seeking advice, not expecting the parties you deal with to be honest/fair/helpful as you would as a consumer with a big company.

hammergirl28

The house at the top of our chain is being sold by Purple Bricks and all the estate agents in the chain have been complaining about them not responding to emails or phonecalls and generally delaying the whole process. In the end the EA of the house we were buying contacted and dealt with the vendors at the top of the chain direct as purple bricks were useless!

always_sunny

So your daughter signed something without fully understanding what she was agreeing to?

greatgimpo

If the company has nothing to hide, they could have left the contract overnight for her to study without pressure. That's what I demand of an estate agent. I make amendments (length of selling period, commission rate etc), sign and photocopy it, and deliver the next day. No agreement from them, no contract. At least it opens the way to negotiate with them and come to an in-between figure.

eddddy

All the big EA chains (online and offline) almost certainly put their people through intensive sales training.

And the training almost certainly includes:

- strategies for winning the sellers' trust
- strategies for convincing sellers not to speak to other EAs
- strategies for convincing sellers to sign a contract on the spot

Followed up with very aggressive sales targets. And if you don't achieve your targets, you're likely to be sacked.

Unfortunately, sellers who haven't been exposed to very much high pressure selling can get "caught out" by these strategies.

I guess that once you've been caught out once or twice by high pressure salespeople, you start to develop a healthy cynicism, and become more diligent.

G_M

She chose to go with what she thought was the cheapest option.

However, despite this being an expensive product, she chose not to shop around. She should have looked at at least 3 different agents if not more.

She then signed up without understanding what she was signing.

She then chose not to take advantage of her right to cancel within 14 days and did not spend that time checking that what she'd bought was what she wanted.

Cheap agents keep their prices down because each customer pays for the marketing costs, whether a sale results or not. Traditional estate agents charge more, but only if a sale results - they swallow the marketing costs of customers whose properties don't sell.

I'm afraid she has to take some personal responsibility for being in the situation she's in.

greatgimpo

hammergirl28 wrote: »

The house at the top of our chain is being sold by Purple Bricks and all the estate agents in the chain have been complaining about them not responding to emails or phonecalls and generally delaying the whole process. In the end the EA of the house we were buying contacted and dealt with the vendors at the top of the chain direct as purple bricks were useless!

Thank you. Sometimes this forum throws up a nugget of information that I try and store. That may well be a factor in any future property transactions I make, and I will need to be sure that any online agents anywhere in my chain are treated warily.

csgohan4

Someone tried to charge me 1000 pounds to chop a tree down, next tradesman charged me 300 quid, did a good job.

Told the first tradesman to Foxtrot oscar.


Always shop around and don't be pressured, it is your money afterall