EA pushing us to use their inhouse mortgage advisor

Wake_up_call

It always amazes me that estate agents think they are the ones in charge of the process. Their job is to market a property so that sellers and buyers can be brought together...and that's it. No more.

In order of importance in the process they are the lowest of the low.

The order is something like this:

1) Buyer
2) Vendor
3) Lender
4) Solicitor
5) Surveyor
6) Broker/adviser
7) Estate agent.

hazyjo

Wake_up_call wrote: »

It always amazes me that estate agents think they are the ones in charge of the process. Their job is to market a property so that sellers and buyers can be brought together...and that's it. No more.

In order of importance in the process they are the lowest of the low.

The order is something like this:

1) Buyer
2) Vendor
3) Lender
4) Solicitor
5) Surveyor
6) Broker/adviser
7) Estate agent.

Yet they get paid the most :rotfl:

paddyrg

sparky130a wrote: »

Then that's the end of the conversation with the agent.

Be assertive and as Zammo from Grangehill got told, Just say NO.

That'll be Zammo who died from a smack overdose? May I suggest being more asseertive in your NO's than that? ;-)

nLdn

My standard response when I bought in autumn was "As director of a limited company my income is a mix of salary and dividends so I am already engaged with a broker who understands my business and mortgage needs."

Tigerbread

I am having the same problem. I have an agreement in principle but they are saying I have to go and do an affordability check with their mortgage advisor. Just out of interest the initials of your estate agents aren't BE are they?

Tigerbread

Just realised that there are a few with the initials BE lol both words are longer than 5 letters.

ACG

You do not need to see their mortgage broker - or any mortgage broker.
Estate agents are a little more forceful when it comes to first time buyers or if a property is in high demand.

They are not allowed to sway the customer in any way if you do not use their broker (or solicitor or anything else of theirs) although in reality it doe happen (primarily because people moan but once the complete they do nothing about it).

If you have your own broker, ask them to call up the agents and advise them you are good for the money. That is all it should take, if they push it beyond that then they are breaking the law. Look up the estate agency act.

Some agents are fine once they speak to a broker, others are still a bit pushy but I tend to find 99% of the time once I speak to an agent they back down.

ACG

Wake_up_call wrote: »

In order of importance in the process they are the lowest of the low.

The order is something like this:

1) Buyer
2) Vendor
3) Lender
4) Solicitor
5) Surveyor
6) Broker/adviser
7) Estate agent.

Nice to know we are not quite the lowest of the low.
(Clearly I am biased) You will probably find a good broker can get an estate agent, lender and solicitors all in line. The amount of times I have come across Solicitors who still think it is 1950 and they should be treated like royalty is unreal (normally 500 year old men who are well past retirement) or estate agents (as per this one) who try to bully buyers with vague threats of losing the house.

And the one we tend to have a little more control over are underwriters at the lenders. Some of them are so lazy or incompetant they have stupid requests. A quick phone call to our account managers and it all gets resolved. Leave that to a customer and they have to call a call centre, try to articulate what is wrong and then wait for it to get resolved.

I am not trying to "big up" the brokers job, it is a reality of what we do. 90% of the time I come across an issue, my client has no idea about it...less stress for them = less stress for me = happier buying process. The vast majority of cases do not have issues, but I put that down to the fact we know what we are doing.

So to put us next to estate agents (who I agree are the lowest of the low more often than not) is a little insulting. We really should be number 1 .

michelle09

The EA we used said the same thing - we agreed to speak to the mortgage advisor, but would only use them (and pay) if they could find us a deal better than the mortgage we had in place including the arrangement fee we'd already paid. (We had the mortgage offer from a sale that had fallen through).

And to be fair, it wasn't a put off. If they had found us a lower rate then we would have gone for it. Spoke to the guy on the phone after the offer was accepted and he couldn't do a better deal.

I would agree to it as long as you confirm that you don't have to pay for talking to them.

sparky130a

ACG wrote: »

Nice to know we are not quite the lowest of the low.
(Clearly I am biased) You will probably find a good broker can get an estate agent, lender and solicitors all in line. The amount of times I have come across Solicitors who still think it is 1950 and they should be treated like royalty is unreal (normally 500 year old men who are well past retirement) or estate agents (as per this one) who try to bully buyers with vague threats of losing the house.

And the one we tend to have a little more control over are underwriters at the lenders. Some of them are so lazy or incompetant they have stupid requests. A quick phone call to our account managers and it all gets resolved. Leave that to a customer and they have to call a call centre, try to articulate what is wrong and then wait for it to get resolved.

I am not trying to "big up" the brokers job, it is a reality of what we do. 90% of the time I come across an issue, my client has no idea about it...less stress for them = less stress for me = happier buying process. The vast majority of cases do not have issues, but I put that down to the fact we know what we are doing.

So to put us next to estate agents (who I agree are the lowest of the low more often than not) is a little insulting. We really should be number 1 .

No smoke blowing but this with bells on.

It IS the reality of UK house buying. And why i'll always use a decent broker.