What should I expect from my estate agent post sale?

gasandelectricity

I put my house on the market in August and have had an extremely disappointing experience with my estate agent. To save too much detail, I thought they would provide a quality service and achieve a higher sale price than if I’d have gone with a cheap online agent like purple bricks (in which case expectations are lowered as you get what you pay for). In reality they’ve tried misselling promotional deals which benefit nobody else but them at the sellers expense, had an extremely poor attitude throughout and achieved a selling price far below their expected selling price. The most frustrating thing throughout is their extremely poor communication. They were almost sacked off before the sale was achieved on a number of occasions, but got lucky and I agreed a sale in mid October.

The behaviour of my estate agents to the agents I’m buying from are stark in difference. My buying agents are contacting me regularly to ensure my side of things are going well, they reply to my emails within a reasonable timeframe. I know they’re doing this for the selllers as well to help things progress. My agents action my emails but completely ignore my contacts. They have 5* reviews fill out on google and I do not understand how they have achieved this - they will be getting a 1 star from me when the process is complete and I want to know if the buying agent is particularly good or my selling agent is notably bad. I suspect it’s something in the middle.

It doesn’t help that I was adamant from the off I wouldn’t be using their mortgage services (paying someone for arranging a mortgage for me, and getting a nice cheque from the lenders as well, when I can do it myself, no thanks), and I was non commitall on their solicitors, and called them out on their misselling. But this is all so unprofessional.

G_M

What should I expect from my estate agent post sale?

An invoice. No more no less. Their work is done.

They seem to have found you a buyer you were happy with so it's all ended well.

Mutton_Geoff

Unfortunately you won't find any estate agents contracts with performance related clauses in it. Just their commission and clauses how you can't get out of paying it.

Bluebell1000

We exchanged contracts to buy a house yesterday. I've been very impressed with the estate agents, who sent weekly updates about what my solicitor was doing, and spent every day for about the last fortnight on the phone to solicitors for the chain (only 2 properties, mind you) trying to get exchange to happen.

Their description and floor plan of the house we're buying wasn't great, but from a buyers perspective it just meant that we were pleasantly surprised on viewing...

I would say that that's my idea of a very good estate agent.

I'd probably have expected pretty much no contact from the agents, so I've been very happy by how much time and effort they've put into helping our purchase go through!

mrginge

Why did you sign a contract where the EA was allowed to decide how much to sell your house for?

Tom99

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]After agreeing a sale I would expect my EA to be closely following my purchasers progress, to keep in regular contact with the purchaser and report all contact back to me.[/FONT]

JoJo1978

Their service varies widely between agents. Ultimately the contract you sign as a vendor is for marketing your property, perhaps conducting viewings and negotiating on offers. They don't guarantee anything else.

The reason they maintain contact after that point is because they cannot claim a fee until exchange of contracts so it's in their interests to facilitate progress. Some are not very effective or interested in this bit.

Our estate agent has just been discovered by both solicitors to have presented an offer to us as unconditional, but the buyer has evidence he presented to show his offer had conditions. We've given the agents over a week to sort this out, but they haven't.

They simply will not admit liability for their error despite headed documents to the contrary. To save the deal we've agreed to the conditions and absorbed the cost. On the phone during a showdown with the director of the agency this evening he admitted to my husband that 'marketing is our focus then it goes to solicitors.'

We've knocked a couple of stars off their pending review!