Estate Agent Sour Grapes?

bridiej

We put our house on the market at £165K after three valuations: two agents said £165K and another £195K (!).

The people we're selling to came for a second viewing today and told us that they'd been into the over-valueing agent and had been told that they'd been ripped off as they'd valued the property at £159K!!

I am absolutely fuming! :mad:

I've rung said agent and spoke to the owner of the firm, of course he denied it and said the staff would never do that, but I am so bloody annoyed, it could have jeopardised our sale if the buyers werent so keen! Luckily they are no fan of estate agents either, so didnt seem to worried, but I cant believe they stoop to such shoddy tactics becuase they didnt get the job!

:mad: :mad:

lush_walrus

Discusting behavour if your buyer has the story right, but the figures sound very simular with the 5 and the 9 switched so it may be a misunderstanding.

Only question I would ask, is what were your buyers doing in the other agency when they are buying yours?

aliasojo

I wondered if it was a misunderstanding too, if the valuation was referred to from a written sheet somewhere it's possible a typo was made.

Of course if this figure was mentioned from memory by the person who dealt with the valuation, then I'm not sure you could use the same excuse?

I don't suppose you'll ever really know if it was a genuine mistake or an attempt to sabotage your sale.

Selling is stressful enough without having this kind of thing to contend with too.

Try not to worry. I hope it all goes smoothly from here.

bridiej

lush_walrus wrote:

Discusting behavour if your buyer has the story right, but the figures sound very simular with the 5 and the 9 switched so it may be a misunderstanding.

Only question I would ask, is what were your buyers doing in the other agency when they are buying yours?

They went in to get themselves removed from their mailing list, as I think they were registered with most of the agents in our local town.

lush_walrus

Ok fair enough, just that some buyers arent whiter than white either, people we have thought were buying properties through us have then carried on looking elsewhere and even put in an offer somewhere else. So when I read that alarm bells rang!

mallory_knox

Trust no-one! When we sold our last house we had our buyer all organised, found the house we wanted, our buyer even went as far as getting a survey done and coming round to agree prices on some bits and pieces of furniture and white goods we didnt want to take with us - two weeks before the exchange date he disappeared, and it turned out that he had been buying our house as a buy to let, but had tried to fiddle the mortgage as buying to live in it, thus getting a lower rate. Of course he was refused the mortgage once they found out, and completely wasted our time, and money. Heartbreaking.

bridiej

Yeah, thanks, that really helps...!

IvanOpinion

Estate agents, lawyers, politicians and many journalists all fall into the same category ... more than willing to put a price ticket on grandma. Just about everybody is ripped off on houses since generally I believe they are very over valued by estate agents (looking to maximise their commission) ... however in most cases people will simply put a price on a house that they are willing to pay ... if they are willing to pay it then how can they be ripped off?


On the whiter than white side .. some sellers are also far from it. We had found a buyer for our house and had agreed on another house. We had agreed price, I had paid for a full detailed survey, arranged a mortgage, aranged moving company and was waiting to sign the contracts. For some reason they were delayed but a couple of days prior to the agreed completion date everybody was to sign ... I went in and signed both contracts, later that day the buyer of my house signed but the person we were buying from did not turn up ... on the morning of the day before the completion date she decided to remove her house from the market. So we were left with nowhere to go.

I thought I might have had some reason to get money from her but my solicitor advised me that because there was no contract I had no recourse - I guess I was only paying for a survey on her house out of the goodness of my heart. To be fair the estate agent, who was just new into business was mortified and he actually went out of his way to help us but we still had to find temporary accomodation for 3 months.

Ivan