How much can a bad estate agent affect a purchase?

SoTiredTho

TL;DR: We're having some issues with a questionable estate agent. Vendor is keen to stick with us as buyers. How much can this affect the purchase going forwards? Any advice on what to watch out for would be welcomed!

Full list of estate agent woes: 
We put an offer in on a house two weeks ago, were told it was "best and final offers only." Met the asking price, had our offer accepted very quickly.
We were originally told that the house would be listed as Sold (STC) once we had proven our funding. We provided all our documents by Wednesday last week; the only reason it took that long is because they were verified by app and the instructions were unclear. House listing remained up.

We tried to contact the estate agent every day, got to Sunday, were told that the vendor had received an offer £10k higher than ours. The estate agent asked on the same call whether we were going to match this (we said no), and then he revealed on the same call the vendor was sticking with us anyway. This seemed pretty cheeky in itself. 
On Monday, when we were told by an assistant that the vendor needed to approve the change to "Sold (STC)". We've not been able to get in touch with our contact at all except for him calling us on Sunday to talk about the higher offer.

Got in touch with the vendor via the estate agent's online messaging service; they HAVE instructed the estate agent to change the listing to "sold", and are unsure why it hasn't been. As far as I'm aware the agent still hasn't given the sales memorandum to our solicitor, so we can't progress on anything. (We have provided the solicitor contact details both by email and over the phone, so they definitely have them.) 
 We're going to meet with the vendors later this week for another viewing of the house/to find out what their chain is like, it sounds like they've been having issues with the agent as well. 

I'm debating leaving a very negative review of the estate agents online/making a complaint to see if that'll get them a bit more in gear, but also concerned it will make them even more unhelpful somehow! Interested to find out in what ways they can cause us problems after giving us the sales memorandum; after that point, I assume it's mostly solicitors interacting?  

If anyone has any general estate agent wrangling advice I would appreciate it  

[Deleted User]

Nothing particularly out of the ordinary there. It's the estate agents job to get the best deal for their client.

They're not going to disrupt the sale or they don't get paid, so just press on.

ace33

If they can be problematic you can always ask the vendors if they would mind contacting the directly. Soon you will be liasing via solicitors anyway.

I liased with our buyers directly in the end as they were getting frustrated waiting for the agents. He put a complaint in and thought I wasn't getting back to them as they had told him. In truth they always had answers from me within a couple of hours.

Davesnave

If we'd relied on contact through the agent only, our last purchase might not have happened, but we were buying in a sector where contact with the vendor is normal and the sale itself was far from standard. Quite often, people want that distancing an agent provides.

I would say that if your vendor is happy to speak with you, fine, but it depends greatly on the individuals involved whether it's wise to become matey. You won't change the learned behaviour of an EA, so it's a waste of time leaving negative reviews etc.

The bad ones will go to the wall when the recession finally hits, just as they did in 2008/9. I enjoyed that, although having our rental deposit return cheque bounce wasn't funny at the time!

eddddy

SoTiredTho said:

 As far as I'm aware the agent still hasn't given the sales memorandum to our solicitor, so we can't progress on anything.

You don't really need the EA to provide a Memorandum of Sale. It's just a document that contains enough information for the solicitors to get started.

You and the seller can each give that info to your respective solicitors.  Maybe exchange emails with the seller to get the info. The info is stuff like:

• Name and address of seller(s)
• Name and address of seller's solicitor
• Name and address of buyer(s)
• Name and address of buyer's solicitor
• Address of property being sold/bought
• Agreed offer price
• Tenure (freehold/leasehold)

Plus any other stuff that you think might be relevant to your solicitor.  And your solicitor will probably have forms for you to fill in, asking you about other info they'll need.

Is the EA a 'low cost' one who was paid in advance - as opposed to being paid on completion? That might explain their disinterest.

The downside of having a 'disinterested' EA is if there are problems along the way - for example, the mortgage valuer down-values the property, and perhaps you want to reduce the offer.

A 'good' EA would act as 'middle man'/negotiator and try to negotiate a solution that's acceptable to both parties. There might be a bigger risk of things 'going badly', if seller and buyer try to do this directly with each other.


Edit to add...

And just be aware that it may not be the EA that's causing the problem - it may be the sellers.

It may be that they're being 'nice' to your face - but telling the EA to ask you for more money, and to leave the property on the market and/or not providing their solicitors details to the EA.