Estate Agent comedian, shark or both ?

michael1234

Firstly let me apologise for making a second post on the board today - a very rare thing for me but I just couldn't resist posting my experience up today if nothing else to remind us how frequently and easily some/most EAs lie.

For boring but important reasons I won't go into I asked about the lowish EPC at this property (a flat). His reply was "..oh you just need to replace the halogen lamps there with LEDs...."
Me: "...are you sure they are the old style halogens?"
EA: "..absolutely certain."
Me: "...I'm not doubting you but would you mind if I removed one and took a look ?" 
EA: "Look I'll give you my personal guarantee that these lamps are 100% halogens" 
<anyway allows me to take a look and 1 minute later>
EA: "....Oh is that what the 5w means? That means its an LED?"

I stayed friendly to the end but think I'll let him try and sell this to someone else.

youth_leader

But the EPC is available to read on line?  I was p'd off when I bought this place - I had to replace all 17 spotlight transformers for the LED replacements to work.  

FreeBear

michael1234 said: For boring but important reasons I won't go into I asked about the lowish EPC at this property (a flat). His reply was "..oh you just need to replace the halogen lamps there with LEDs...."

That would improve the score by one point. Certainly not enough to raise the EPC to a higher band.

Same for fitting a programmable thermostat and TRVs (if it is a wet CH system). Another point scored.

If it is an all electric flat with panel heaters (not high retention night storage heaters), or even worse, an electric boiler, there isn't much that can be done cheaply to raise the EPC. But then what would an estate agent know about EPC improvements....

ThisIsWeird

Treat anything EAs say with caution. Huge range of abilities, morals, arrogance. Some are very good. Most are ordinary.
But, not reason in itself to put you off a place - that sort of detail comes down to your own due diligence. Was it otherwise a decent place?

mlz1413

In response to your thread title, Yes! 
Most EAs will tell you what they think you want to hear.

 If you want to buy a property I would advise to not ask them anything or to ask them to ask the owner.  Don't let an EAs BS put you off or you will constantly be viewing.

Sapindus

The estate agent who is selling my house was astonished yesterday to hear that the buyer's solicitor is asking questions about bamboo.  Said she had NEVER heard of such a thing being asked. 

TripleH

We have dealt with a couple of estate agents who turned nasty on us

1. We were looking at a new build flat in a conversion. The seller's solicitor took ages to respond, whilst our side was within 48 hours of receiving the query. I got an angry call telling me that we needed to exchange by tomorrow because our solicitor had a response. I reminded him that a response was not an answer, hung up, blocked him and rang his colleague and told him the other guy was to never call me again.

2. We were buying a house at the same time as in-laws (who were overseas packing up their life there). There was a delay in the funds (or something like that) and the in-laws agents ring us up (we were point of contact) and told us we needed to pay the amount ASAP. We replied that we couldn't as we were buying a house as well. The agent replied that our house wasn't important and we needed to stop our transaction completely andsort our in- laws purchase out first. We were further along in our purchase and there were another 2 months of issues to resolve on in-laws purchase.

We were 200 miles away otherwise that agent would have had an interesting task retrieving his pen from his colon.

Hoenir

Sapindus said:

The estate agent who is selling my house was astonished yesterday to hear that the buyer's solicitor is asking questions about bamboo.  Said she had NEVER heard of such a thing being asked. 

Somebody has seen what can happen when you plant the wrong type. In all walks of working life there's a first time for everything. 

Sapindus

Hoenir said:

Sapindus said:

The estate agent who is selling my house was astonished yesterday to hear that the buyer's solicitor is asking questions about bamboo.  Said she had NEVER heard of such a thing being asked. 

Somebody has seen what can happen when you plant the wrong type. In all walks of working life there's a first time for everything. 

It's been in the news for several years.