Estate agent issues

Robbo66

Deleted_User said:

Sorry, I probably should have explained myself a little better. 

I got it valued by two agents & both said the same amount, so maybe it is correct value, but the EA himself stupidly said to me 'It's hard to price things at the moment, we made a few mistakes on this other block and didn't put the price high enough' so it's sort of suck in my head now that they may have undervalued it. 

In hindsight, I should have told the EA how I would like things to go, but I've not sold a property before so I just assumed that it would go how all the others are in the area. A week or so of viewings & then offers full & final. The EA was unbelievably pushy with the investor offer, and if I had just accepted that, I wouldn't have had a chance to hear the other offer, which is £2k more.

It all just feels very rushed and like they are trying to make 2k fee's for 1 days work. At the end of the day £5,000 to me is £50 to them in fee's so it doesn't matter if I get the highest price or not. 

My contract states that I just have to give 7 days notice, I think I'm just going to talk to the sales manager about my expectations & check they line up with what he thinks is reasonable.

Thank you everyone. 

But its not one days work is it, someone had to come and give you an appraisal, then come out again to do the details, add property to their CRM so it can then be loaded on to the portals, field phone calls, attend viewings, negotiate with prospective purchaser that's all the easy part. Now they will be chasing solicitors, mortgage advisers at least once a week to ensure the sale exchanges and bear in mind that all takes around 12 - 16 weeks and if your sale falls trough at the lat moment it would all have been for nothing.

billy2shots

My very blunt short answer is,

Stop being greedy.

These things have a nasty habit of coming back to bite you. 

You are gambling on potentially a couple more £thousand but you could easily lose that if things go the other way. 

saajan_12

Focusing on the question about how to deal with the EA, and not about whether to accept an offer, which franckly, is the OP's perogative..

OP, I don't think this would be severe enough to frustrate the entire contract, as it could slip though as them stating facts and their opinion on what you'll do, plus it could be remedied by everyone getting on the same page. However I don't think you 100% want to terminate the contract anyway, if this is the main agent. So you're left with trying to remedy..
I'd suggest speaking to the EA with your findings in a non accusatory way - say you know someone who enquired and they got a response you weren't expecting, so there may be some confusion on your stance. You would like to encourage further viewings with a new, higher target price and you're not currently planning on accepting the offers on the table given the level of interest. Then give it some time, and 'mystery shop' them again. If they are more encouraging then great, if they still haven't changed then consider escalating to a complaint. 

eddddy

Deleted_User said:

The EA was unbelievably pushy with the investor offer, and if I had just accepted that, I wouldn't have had a chance to hear the other offer, which is £2k more.

As I said previously, it could be that the investor is the EA's favoured buyer.

For example, because...

• The investor uses the EA for lettings
• The investor and EA are friends
• The investor buys a lot of properties via the EA
• The investor intends to buy your flat, refurb it, and resell it via the same EA

If that's the case, it can be a very difficult situation to deal with. The EA can try to 'scare away' potential buyers by: discouraging them from viewing; being generally 'luke-warm' or even negative about your flat; being unhelpful to people who are interested in your flat; etc - so that nobody out-bids the investor.

The best approach might be keep things friendly with the EA, but show the EA that you're taking a very active interest in how they're marketing your flat.


If your contract allows you leave the current EA, you can consider doing that - but make sure your new EA's contract won't make you liable for double fees, if you do eventually decide to sell to the investor.