[Closed] Are Estate Agents Retarded?

Yes.

Next question?

Is anyone with agent in their job title lying scum?

Have you not seen Kirsty and Phil? They always end up in a house nothing like what they asked for. IMHO its a good idea to look at places not on your ideal list as it'll help galvanise what you actually want. That said, yes, estate agents aren't the most useful people.

They obviously didn't understand what a [i]garrage[/i] is.

Not sure about "retarded" but certainly annoying and generally useless.

They have houses on their books which they are selling. They make £££ on selling the houses. You are interested in buying a house.

That's about it as far as they're concerned 🙂

Yes, they're mostly idiots. They just note your a price bracket and number of bedrooms, and then send you pretty much everything they have on their books.

They're even worse when you're selling. They send any old people to look round: we're trying to sell a knackered old fixer-upper in need of lots of work (currently sold STC but I've almost abandoned hope of ever completing). I lost count of the number of doddery OAPs we showed round, who thought they were coming to look at a charming little cottage in need of a lick of paint, and were horrified to find themselves being shown round half a leaky barn at the end of a farm track.

I suppose they're just desperate to sell at any cost. But it's still flipping annoying.

Look on right move. Tell agent what house/s you want a viewing for.
Simple

Locally there are about 5 different agents. Only one is any good with the rest on a sliding scale that runs from generally useless to the outright dishonest

Yes. For example, they may say things like "we have a proceedable buyer for your house" but what they mean is "we have a proceedable buyer who is in a chain of 3 other people and whose soon-to-be-ex-wife doesn't really want to sell their house so is going to delay delay delay for as long as possible".

I often wonder what sort of service you're likely to get if you approach someone like a real estate agent with a condescending or superior air. Possibly not the best.

Sounds like some people here have had unhappy experiences. 🙂

Yes,

Pretty much scum of the earth,

They are unqualifed people who generally cant get a job in a proper proffesion.

Ground feeding scum in my opinion!

(Ive had bad experiences with them!)

Yep, 'tards, every last one of them.

Used some recently and they were excellent, insisted we go and look at something we had discounted previously and we're now buying it.
The Personal Agent in Epsom area is anyone is looking.

If I was retarded I'd be insulted.

They make £££ on selling the houses.

...but they also make money on financial services, so even though you have to pay a small fortune to get them to sell your house, they are more interested in additional spinoffs in selling mortgages to the prespective buyer than providing a good service to the seller.

Not got a very high opinion of them TBH. I think they must have worked very hard in the background to prevent their whole industry being washed away by the internet.

Similar experience to the OP:
We'd like a 3 bed house with a garage, and no work needing to be done....
How about this 2 bed bungalow?
Lacks a bedroom and garage......
You could build those on?
Well done - failed on all 3 criteria......

Also, being advised to look around a house (after a night shift so very tired) only to find out from the owner it was already sale agreed for the asking price. Not impressed!

DrP

you were lucky

I agreed to sell my house to a purchaser marketed to me as and I quote 'cash buyer'.
After some delay and then investigation by me it turned out the concept of cash buyer meant that once the ****t who wanted to buy my house had the house his auntie had bequeathed to him structurally repaired and managed to sell it they would have the cash to buy my house. Yes it fell through.

Gusamc, feel for you. A book should be written with estate agents terms in, ie; cash buyer: needs to wait for thier property to sell first/rich relative to die/ lottery win. If we compiled enough terms we could make a dictionary, we could even send a copy to every estate agent, you know so they can colour them in.

We looked at a house with a patio which was 4 feet wide and ran down the side of the garage.When I said that's a path not a patio he argued the toss and I walked away as he was a time waster.It was important for this to be described properly as there was no garden just this patio (path!)

We're looking to buy a 2 bed detached cottage with gardens in a quite village on the North York Moors for a holiday/retirement home

The half wits in a couple of estate agencies insist on bombarding us with details of 'two up, two down' terraced town houses in places like York & Scarborough urging us view them urgently 🙄

They really take incompetence & apathy to a new level

"Is anyone with agent in their job title lying scum? "
My Newsagent is OK.

The problem is that every single person buying and selling a house has taken this shite service for granted. Because it's been going on for so long.

I'm an estate agent and I'd bet my entire fee that I could give you a hugely better service than any other agent, anywhere.

I work 8am until 8pm, 7 days a week, I go out and find the buyers rather than waiting for them to walk through the office door, I advertise on every single portal (not just one or two as other agents do), I am fully trained in not just property, but how to take professional photos and how to write a readable marketing piece.

On average it takes me 6 weeks to sell a property and I get just under 97% of the asking price. I don't try to sell you mortgages, insurance and solicitors, but will happily give you contact details of completely independent people who I don't get a kick back from.

I have provable, trackable results and records that support all of the above (taken from Rightmove).

Stop moaning behind your agents back and say it to their face. If they don't sort it out, then change agents!

Oh and finally, I don't drive a Mini...

I love my estate agent. But only because what were her luscious long locks at the start of negotiations had turned into a loosened hair weave complete with netting on show by the end 🙂
Completely agreee though, they are retarded and generally turn quite nasty if you deviate from their predetermined script in any way.

Vanilla83, I can't help but think you might be exaggerating about your work schedule. I mean, if you're on STW, surely you must ride? And I wonder how you find the time to do so if you are really working 12 hour days, seven days a week.
I like the fact you're not one of those Mini-driving agents though.

The Pilot: I don't ride anymore. I've sold all but one of my bikes now and haven't ridden for about 7 months. In the summer I rode after work.

I used to ride a lot. But we've seen that most agents are rubbish, so we've created a company that isn't and are working very hard to make it work. When it settles down, then I'll start riding again.

The mini driving ones near us have the most places for sale but are particlurly un helpfull and usless. We have found howerever that there agents out there who are good and do listen to what you want rather than just sending you anything near your price braket.

I laugh at their pricing strategies. We live in a basic 3 bedroom rabbit hutch, but we like the house & area so have no plans to move. We've changed mortgages a couple of times in the time we've lived here, so although we have no intention of selling we've sort of followed the trend in prices.

Currently there is an identical house for sale on the estate, in fact the biggest difference is that their conservatory is significantly smaller than ours, and it has been on sale for about a year now at £159,950.

Last time we got our house valued it came it at an even £140,000 the easter before the finacial markets went boom (was that 2008??). I can't see that with all the financial shit happening our houses have gained close to £20K in a supposed depressed market.

Locally it is Smart cars that are the little car of choice for the local estate agents.

Steer clear of Enfields - teenage wide boys calling me 'mate' and bombarding me daily with any house they had on the books

We came across one good agent in a year, she phoned us with a house before it hit the market as she knew it met our wishlist, and thats the one we bought. We've still got her card for the next move.

Not just the agents that are incompetant, the whole system of buying/selling is ridiculous. For some reason our house took 4 months to complete even though we were first time buyers and the sellers already had a place sorted (they had two houses). Both us and the sellers we being told packs of lies from agents/solicitors about why it was taking so long, always blaming the other party. Tried to get them all on the conference call, no chance. And I hear 4 months is quick!

Stop moaning behind your agents back and say it to their face.

the whole system of buying/selling is ridiculous

+1. It badly needs changing. And most property solicitors are complete retards as well.

Vanilla83 - problem you've got is that IME all property people say they will provide the same as you and my experiences to date have been consistently bad and costly.

To give just one example, the last house I sold in London had 2 'buyers' Buyer 1 offered £3k less than buyer 2 but the EA recommended I go with number 1 as number 2 had messed people about in the past. Buyer 2, a very nice woman was gutted apparently. Buyer 1 wasn't ready to move for a couple of months but no worries as 'family funds' were on their way and he was a first time buyer. 1 week before completion, buyer 1 announced he couldn't quite get the additional mortgage funds he needed (I had already moved by this time) so I dropped another £5k.

When it was all complete, the EA casually mentioned that they had confused buyer 2 with someone else but not to worry as they had found her a similar flat (which she had already bought) [b]for not much more than mine[/b] !!. He couldn't understand why I was just a tad annoyed 👿

Whereabouts do you operate as I'll be looking to buy next year.....possibly ?

Estate agent under sold my grandads lovely house to a mate of his. . Unfortunatly for the EA involved my grandfather was very active in The Rotary Club.
A few months after the move another member of Rotary asked my granded the price he got for his house, which was several thousand pounds less than the other Rotary chap had offered via the EA in question.
EA sat on the offer so his mate got it for bargain. MoFo
Needles to say word went round the Rotary club rather discreetly and the EA involved probably lost a fair bit of business because of it.
One once told be there were plans for a new trainline to Bordon, Hants and property prices would shoot up . Total blatent lie.

Woody - I'm in Bristol

I thought there was talk of google or Tesco launching a rival to right move so that agents were no longer necessary.

From my point of view of a buyer they were useless, they served no purpose. We found the houses on rightmove and they just seemed to get in the way of us arranging a viewing.

We asked all agents to email me rather than phone (I work in a paint factory, solvents and phones are a bad idea) but they all insisted on phoning me. They would leave a message asking me to call them back with absolutely no explaination as to why. They would then say they had a new house and would like to email me the details! Drove me nuts.

Pity - I'm in Durham, so a bit off your patch.

Generally absolute scum with Slater Hogg being the very worst. When I was buying my first place I bid on a flat along with one other potential buyer. I'd had it surveyed and it valued at about 20K more than the asking price so I put a bid in about 3k below the valuation. There was a 12:30 closing deadline on a Friday and when Slater Hogg, who were the selling agent, saw my bid coming in well over the asking price they alerted the other bidder to this and advised them to get a copy of my survey, which they did, then they outbid me.

Scum.

When we sold our house a while back the bloke from barstard thieves (Bairstow Eves) argued with me about how much I wanted to sell it for
We had seen a house we really wanted at a great price so decided to sell ours at a reasonable price to get it done and dusted

The fool said he didn't want to sell it for the price suggested because it could devalue others he had for sale nearby.

Got told to clear off and had another lot round who were more than happy and we sold it to the first couple who came round. All went through very speedily, didn't have all that silliness with offers and we got the house we wanted even cheaper than expected

We are those mythical Cash buyers - sold our house in six weeks in April for 6% below asking price to the third people to see it. Moved into rental and have been trying to buy a house since. In our experience a single agent independent has been easily the most helpful, honest (really) and informative of all the agents. This is in money-grabbing Windsor, where people have some ridiculous ideas about house prices and mobility ("Oh we will move in the next 12mo, once I've sold my businesses"...).

We almost bought a house, until the vendors wouldn't let the surveyor in and decided they didn't want to move (Thanks for that Lapierre I could have bought instead). Are now buying through Hamptons after our original offer was deemed "ridiculous", but two months down the line and no other proceed-able offers - guess what?

The whole process is a farce, but there are some decent agents out there who give honest valuations and provide a service. And then there are most of the rest! If you have reasonable expectations and know what things are worth, eventually things will work out (I hope).

not retards, no. often lying bastards but highly effective at separating money from it's rightful owner whilst doing little real work.

i'm also sure there are some decent ones around but sellers tend to use the one that promises the highest sale price and lowest fee, which is to yer lying tossers' advantage

From a different perspective to sales, they are all robbing bastards when it comes to rental.

Disgusting charges for credit checks (my mate recently got charged nearly £400 for herself and her 18 year-old daughter), especially when you can get the same checks online for about a tenner. Further agent fees, admin charges and arrangement fees. All with no refund if you're declined. I'm informed they offer nothing to landlords other than a 20% fee to manage the money.

My recent experience, having dealt with several this week, is one of a general level of poor manners too. I'm not their bloody mate.

Managed to secure a house through a private landlord yesterday. Saved me about £550 in bullshit fees.

Yeah. We dealt with about 4 or 5 when we were trying to buy our house and another 3 or 4 when trying to sell my dads. I actually adopted the catchphrase 'Did you listen to what I just said?' as a response to pretty much everything they said.

I'm sure there's the odd one or two who are good at their jobs but I would quite happily cull the vast majority of them. They'd be on the first space-ark as far as I'm concerned.

For the one who actually completed our sale, I kept asking him what he'd done during the process at which pointg he would go a bit blank and then look round at the receptionist who would tell him. As far as I could tell his most useful function was handing over the keys. Oh no, hang on, the receptionist did that.

Are Estate Agents Retarded?

YES!

They need to understand the difference between a notion of a property's value and a realistic market price.

They need to stop exagerrating, lying and cheating and start charging a sensible fee. (0.5% MAX!)

Perhaps even get of their backsides and do something useful, like a day's hard graft!

The EA i bought my flat from had no idea the sale had completed that lunchtime.
I turned up after work to pick up said key. There then followed an hour of faff while they checked with vendor and solicitors re the finances. Eventually got the key ( yep just 1 , and there were 2 people living in a 2 bed flat) to find the vendors had taken the fire and fireplace with them .

The EA i bought my flat from had no idea the sale had completed that lunchtime.

It would have been your solicitors responsibility to tell them that it had completed...

They need to understand the difference between a notion of a property's value and a realistic market price.

We do. A property is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. If you think its over valued, then put a lower offer in...