Why do some estate agents list flats as houses?

pluto261

I come across this semi-frequently now that I'm house-hunting for the first time and I'm kind of baffled by it. I'm used to letting agencies lying about rentals (i.e. listing a room in a house share as a "1 bedroom house" or calling a bedsit with a communal bathroom a "studio flat"), because maybe that actually works to hook in people who are open to different renting situations.

But what do estate agents hope to achieve by taking a property that's a flat and listing it as a house. Do they think that buyers aren't going to notice the other storey with people living in it that isn't included in the price? Are they trying to reach people who have purposefully filtered out flats in the hope that they'll change their mind for this particular flat? Do they think the flat counts as a house because technically it's in a house? Aren't they worried about buyers who are specifically looking for a flat missing out on seeing the listing?

The lying doesn't surprise me, but it just seems like such an odd lie. It's like claiming a property has a garden and then just really hoping no one will ask "where's the garden?" at any point in the process of making a purchase worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. I don't see how mislabelling a property could ever increase the chance of a sale.

hazyjo

Can't say I've noticed it here. Do you have any examples? Are you talking about England? I've seen it mentioned in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

hazyjo

PS could they perhaps be back to back houses, or quarter houses? Not sure of the terms but they are freehold. And many won't have gardens.

FTR

I agree that it's to hook in people who are specifically looking for a house. Looking at the listing you realise in 2 seconds that it's a flat. I don't think a buyer could argue that they are misled by the listing, but the agent gets their flat considered by someone who might not be looking at the whole flat market.

They must find that it works or they wouldn't do it.

NatNat77

I often see semis listed as detached too. Very annoying! 

eddddy

Do you mean in Rightmove? (And maybe other portals.)


I've always assumed it's just unintentional sloppy errors by the EAs. 

• Either they've typed in the property details manually, and ticked some check-boxes incorrectly (e.g. clicked the 'House' check-box instead of 'Flat')

• Or they load their property details into Rightmove from another system, and they haven't mapped the property codes correctly - so some properties end up with the wrong category.

HampshireH

A local agent near me makes a habit of poorly listed properties.

There was a 5 bed detached and extended house listed as a bungalow for ages.

Alongside another of theirs stating 2 bed on search when it was a normal build 3 bed and referred to as a 3 bed in the text and floorplan etc.

But not appearing when searching 3 beds

As a seller I'd be flagging it immediately. But these weren't changed for about 8 weeks.

user1977

Some must just be mistakes - I've seen eg midterraced houses classified as "detached", and I doubt there's any cunning marketing theory behind it. 

TBagpuss

I've always assumed that it's human error on entering things into Rightmove or Zoopla. 

thriftytracey

I've noticed that often semi-detached bungalows have no mention that they are semi-detached!  Just referred to as a bungalow.  Photos often try to disguise it as well.

Greymug

human error.

/thread