Estate agents - advice

The_Bride_3

Hi,
After deciding, with the help of this board, how to price my house, I am now asking advice about estate agents. We have instructed one well known national brand, and they have/will charge us 1.8% on price. My problem is I don't think they are doing enough! They promised to send us details of house to sign-off, no joy, it's supposed to be on a website, no joy, there's supposed to be a board, no joy...
How quickly do these prelimary things usually take? (It has been a week). I have taken the trouble to travel to see them today (am living in rental property 3 hours round trip from the house I am selling) to sign off the details and they assured me it is on the net now. Of course, no joy there yet.... (why do they lie, sigh..)
Is it worth chasing them, or will that just irritate them? It probably doesn't help that i'm out of work at mo and so have too much time to mull this over - but we need to sell the house asap!
Sorry, very rambling, but irritated at agents! Any advice welcome.

DilbertJones

My Mothers for sale board went up the same day

frugal_dougal_3

The_Bride wrote:

Sorry, very rambling, but irritated at agents! Any advice welcome.

Estate Agents inhabit the earth to annoy!!

Most of them do seem to take two weeks to get their advertising up and running properly but they should still be telling enquirers about your property in the meantime, and even taking appointments for viewings if appropriate.

Why not spend some of your free time advertising the property yourself ? There are several websites that you can use free of charge, and if you manage to sell it yourself the agent will not get any fees (unless your contract says otherwise).

Doozergirl

When ours was for sale, the house was on the internet that afternoon and the board went up the next morning. It was in the paper the next available week. That was for 1% commission - pretty standard around here.

There are some great agents out there and there are also some really rubbish ones - the property boom has meant that agents haven't really had to work for their money until now. I had the chain just voted Britains best (apparantly) in London 2 years ago. As well as the same propblems you are having, they told my husband to sign off the details for speed but then refused to talk to me about the sale of my own property for data protection reasons! At one point, the picture onthe website was the guttering of someone elses house and the guy that used to do the viewings was a little on the plump side used to block the hallway in what was already a small place and just stand there nodding saying 'nice, isn't it?' EVERY TIME!! Sorry for ranting - it still gets to me!

If you are getting them to do viewings for you as you are so far away then you should be confident that they are working for their money. If you are not getting the service you want, then change, quickly!

Did you negotiate the 1.8% ? You can normally get the price down just by asking if it is negotiable. The only time I couldn't knock the price down was when they were the only agent in the area - and knew it!

The_Bride_3

You guys have basically confirmed what I thought, that some are good, some are bad!
Dougal - I would love to organise everything myself, it would be ideal, but unfortunately living so far away would make it difficult to advertise it myself, as i wouldn't be around all the time to do viewings...
Doozergirl - I negotiated them down to 1.8% and they wont budge now!
Bride

safesound

The_Bride wrote:

We have instructed one well known national brand, and they have/will charge us 1.8% on price. My problem is I don't think they are doing enough! They promised to send us details of house to sign-off, no joy, it's supposed to be on a website, no joy, there's supposed to be a board, no joy...

There name doesnt start with a D, does it?
My mother recently sold her house with a certain national company whose name starts with a D and it took them over three weeks to get any advertising whatsoever, no sign, no spec sheet, no website. They kept stalling her and telling her it was a clerical error. When they finally did get it all together she only had two viewings in six weeks and then they wanted her to drop the house price by 10K. To be fair when she did she got a buyer within days, but then comes the shocker. She was told by two seperate EA (from aforementioned company) that she would pay 1.5% but when they invoiced her they had charged her 3K plus VAT on a 150K house.
I make that 2% myself but they insisted they hadnt made a mistake and that it was all clearly listed in the contract she signed (but didnt get a copy of). Apparently they dont charge a % for properties under a certain price, they charge a standard fee. It all sounded like a con to me but she had already found a house she wanted (also with them) and didnt want to risk losing the buyer and the new house so she agreed to pay it.
Personally I'd have told them to shove it where the sun doesnt shine, but she wouldnt listen to me.

Fairdo_2

safesound wrote:

There name doesnt start with a D, does it?
My mother recently sold her house with a certain national company whose name starts with a D and it took them over three weeks to get any advertising whatsoever, no sign, no spec sheet, no website. They kept stalling her and telling her it was a clerical error. When they finally did get it all together she only had two viewings in six weeks and then they wanted her to drop the house price by 10K. To be fair when she did she got a buyer within days, but then comes the shocker. She was told by two seperate EA (from aforementioned company) that she would pay 1.5% but when they invoiced her they had charged her 3K plus VAT on a 150K house.
I make that 2% myself but they insisted they hadnt made a mistake and that it was all clearly listed in the contract she signed (but didnt get a copy of). Apparently they dont charge a % for properties under a certain price, they charge a standard fee. It all sounded like a con to me but she had already found a house she wanted (also with them) and didnt want to risk losing the buyer and the new house so she agreed to pay it.
Personally I'd have told them to shove it where the sun doesnt shine, but she wouldnt listen to me.

If your Mother has now completed, she should be able to go back to them and ask for a copy of the contract that she had signed. Ideally go in with her and insist on it straight away. They have to keep the records for at least 6 years, I believe.

There is nothing to stop her asking for some money back if they were wrong and threaten to take them to Trading Standards if there is friction.

Unfortunately, you do get bad with the good and sometimes you can put a very on both of those!

safesound

I'll certainly suggest it but as to whether she'll agree is another matter. You'd think she had money to burn honestly. They're about to sign the contracts for the new house so hopefully they should be completeing soon.

spottydog

safesound wrote:

She was told by two seperate EA (from aforementioned company) that she would pay 1.5% but when they invoiced her they had charged her 3K plus VAT on a 150K house.
I make that 2% myself but they insisted they hadnt made a mistake and that it was all clearly listed in the contract she signed (but didnt get a copy of). Apparently they dont charge a % for properties under a certain price, they charge a standard fee. It all sounded like a con to me but she had already found a house she wanted (also with them) and didnt want to risk losing the buyer and the new house so she agreed to pay it.

Did the contract have a clause 1.5% with a minimum of £3k? The first place I sold all estate agents said there would be a minimum so I got the contract minimum amount to be the 1.5% of the minimum I was going to accept for the property (had I not done this I would have paid about 2.5% as the original minimum they wanted).

Jimj40

Hmm - they certainly don't sound very impressive!

I did some homework and decided which I felt was the best local agent. He visited Friday afternoon, the details were up on the Net first thing Saturday and by the same Saturday evening I'd had 5 viewings and two offers on the 2 flats. It took exactly 2 weeks to get several offers that were well within our comfort zone and the two Sold signs up. By contrast, my immediate neighbour has had his place on the books of the local "prestige" agent for 9 months and hasn't had a hint of an offer.

I think that some sleuthing around in terms of quality of website and age of window displays, can pay dividends. The commission rate isn't too much of a factor if the agent puts in the work to get the sale through in your time-scale. I now have my father's place in Yorkshire on the market and have taken trouble to ensure that the agent there is aware of what we're looking to do and the required timescale; it remains to see how much "motivation" it may be necessary to administer!