do estate agents have an obligation to be honest?

[j1979]

My advice would be to go direct to the vendor if you can, let them know the score, that you'd like to give them an offer. If you find a way to cut out the middle man, so much the better.

Have a look at this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tips-Tricks-...?tag=miro04-21

the seller is barclays bank! so not sure how easy that would be

[SammEl]

the seller is barclays bank! so not sure how easy that would be

Repossession?

I'm guessing they have given the EA a price to keep too, anything under and it's automatically refused.

[j1979]

Repossession?

I'm guessing they have given the EA a price to keep too, anything under and it's automatically refused.

yes i think it must have been! the frontdoor shows signs of forced entry as well..

[j1979]

Saracen, very biased post IMO, I am guessing you haven't sold many properties? (Neither have I personally, but my parents have sold many and bought many, therefore I know how they think).

When you sell, you want the most money possible, and you don't care about the buyer at all, the more money the better, you're not making friends with them, they are your money bags. We sell a house at £350,000 and someone offers £345,000, sod off, I want my £350,000 and that's the end of it, you want the house? Add an extra £5000 and it's yours, after all, you're spending £350,000 already. If the buyer refuses to add the money and you know they aren't coming back, then you'll say "I'll reconsider your offer and we can work something out between us". If they say no, then that's their loss not the sellers tbh, there will always be buyers, and if someone wants to wait an extra week for £5000 more, then so be it. The buyer will be unhappy, but the seller doesn't care at all.

Now if you are buying, you want to bargain of the year, you find your dream home but you would like it £50,000 cheaper, so you'll put in a offer and hope for the best. How do you think the seller thinks of this? He thinks your is taking the absolute piss, but the buyer just wants to see how much he can get off of the price. If you negotiate you might get £30,000 off, maybe £20,000, but at the end of the day, a saving is a saving. You're laughing if you are the buyer, and the seller is cheesed off.

It's just haggling.

Now regarding this situation, I have spoken to the parents about it and you can't do anything at all, but when you put an offer in you should get a letter back to state you have done so, and you can use this if something goes wrong regarding anything to do with the offer etc.

its not haggling when the estate agents are making up counter offers from buyers that dont exist. im pritty sure its fraud, or close to it.

[j1979]

I'm sure there are honest estate agents. No really, there must be. Somewhere. Mustn't there?

Personally, though, I've yet to come across one, and I've dealt with some right cowboys. One rejected an offer from me, and I was a bit surprised a few days later to receive a call from the vendor ('cos, being a bit of a cynic, I'd left him my card ) to enquire if I was going to make an offer? The agent had rejected my offer without even bothering to inform the vendor it had been made. The vendor, incidentally, was not happy about it. Not at all.

I then dealt direct with the vendor, we agreed the price between us and then told the agent that the property was now sold. And that sale subsequently concluded and I moved in.

On another property, the agent rejected the offer. I'm sure (but can't prove) he was after an improved offer. I walked. A few days later .... phone call from agent, they've reconsidered and would like to accept offer. Too late, I told them. I've found something else ..... with another agent.

On another occasion, I had an offer accepted, and was proceeding down the purchase process when I got a call telling me the vendor had decided the price was too low, and he upped in several thousand. I declined, and withdrew. Several days later the agent tells me the vendor had reconsidered, and would go ahead at the original price. The hell he will. He tried to screw me once, and I am like hell giving him another shot at it - he might time it better next time, like after I'd incurred lots of survey and/or legal costs. I don't have proof, but I suspect that that was the agent playing games, and not actually the vendor. Either way, I told the agent in anatomically precise and eye-watering detail precisely where his vendor could stick their re-acceptance of the offer, because I wouldn't touch them with a red hot bargepole ..... not if it was the last available house on the planet.

Another agent wanted to make acceptance of the offer conditional on me using both a solicitor and mortgage broker recommended by them. Well, the finance was already sorted and in place, and the solicitor was a family friend that had been doing our conveyancing for three generations. And, on principle, no way on earth am I using a solicitor recommended by, and no doubt having an active relationship with, the agent for the other party. Never mind that I had it sorted already, or that my solicitor was a long-term friend ..... I wouldn't do that because I want at least a chance that my lawyer's looking out for my interests, not for his next commission from his estate agent buddy. I'd find an independent lawyer merely on principle and common sense.

I could go on with stories like this all night, but suffice it to say, my attitude about estate agents is cynical in the extreme. And maybe there's some honest ones, but all I will say is that my cynicism is a realism, borne of personal experience.

some food for thought, thanks saracen! your posts are always full of good advice, but being dyslexic means i have to book a day off work to read them.

[Saracen]

Saracen, very biased post IMO, I am guessing you haven't sold many properties? (Neither have I personally, but my parents have sold many and bought many, therefore I know how they think).

When you sell, you want the most money possible, and you don't care about the buyer at all, the more money the better, you're not making friends with them, they are your money bags. We sell a house at £350,000 and someone offers £345,000, sod off, I want my £350,000 and that's the end of it, you want the house? Add an extra £5000 and it's yours, after all, you're spending £350,000 already. If the buyer refuses to add the money and you know they aren't coming back, then you'll say "I'll reconsider your offer and we can work something out between us". If they say no, then that's their loss not the sellers tbh, there will always be buyers, and if someone wants to wait an extra week for £5000 more, then so be it. The buyer will be unhappy, but the seller doesn't care at all.

Now if you are buying, you want to bargain of the year, you find your dream home but you would like it £50,000 cheaper, so you'll put in a offer and hope for the best. How do you think the seller thinks of this? He thinks your is taking the absolute piss, but the buyer just wants to see how much he can get off of the price. If you negotiate you might get £30,000 off, maybe £20,000, but at the end of the day, a saving is a saving. You're laughing if you are the buyer, and the seller is cheesed off.

It's just haggling.

Now regarding this situation, I have spoken to the parents about it and you can't do anything at all, but when you put an offer in you should get a letter back to state you have done so, and you can use this if something goes wrong regarding anything to do with the offer etc.

I've bought and sold enough houses to be talking from personal experience.

Biased? Yup .... with good reason. What I described above happened to me. If I'm biased then, as I said, it's based on experience.

As for your description of the negotiation stage, then of course, buyers want the lowest price and sellers want the highest. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is after the two parties have agreed a price.

In just about anything non-property deal in the UK, after you have offer, acceptance and either exchange of consideration or promise thereof, you have a binding contract. In some cases, it might be subject to due diligence to ensure that things are actually as represented. That's certainly the case in a good few business scenarios. In England and Wales, however, that's not so for property. Property deals still have to be done in writing and, unless it's changed recently and I haven't noticed, under seal.

So, if you're selling you car, and II offer you a price, you counter with a higher suggestion and I agree, then we have a deal. Theoretically, it's binding even if verbal though it's hard to prove. But if we put it in writing and you then change your mind, you may find yourself getting sued, and losing. While you may not have to provide the car (because specific performance awards are fairly unusual), you would be liable for damages for breach of contract.

Now take exactly the same situation, but it's a house not a car.

You're selling and you want the best price. I'm buying and I want the lowest I can get. It's the most fundamental tenet of trade that either we reach a mutually agreeable compromise and a sale result, or you won't drop to a point I'm prepared to go and I won't pay the minimum you'll accept. In which case, we each walk away, and no sale occurs.

But not with houses. With them, I offer a price, and you accept. We have a deal, but it isn't binding. Even if, in your example, you ask for £350,000 and I agree to your price. It still isn't binding. On either party. But if you want to proceed, there are going to be costs involved. We're soon both going to start incurring legal fees. As a buyer, I'm probably going to want a survey, and depending on the property, that can be expensive. It'll probably be heading towards a £1000 for a full structural, and if there's specialist elements to it, it could top that. And you either won't be able to complete without some sort of survey if there's a mortgage lender involved because they'll insist on it, or you're either very foolish or very brave if you're providing the money yourself, because you can come very expensively unstuck if, for example, there's subsidence and you don't pick it up, or any number of other nasty problems. Maybe thousands to replace a faulty roof.

Suppose you're buying my house. We reach a deal, and you get all the work done. Your solicitor has completed all the searches and satisfied himself, and you, that everything is okay, that there's no nasty covenants on the property, that title is good and so forth. And you've had that £1000 survey done.

And then, two or three months after we reached the deal, I change my mind and tell you I want an extra £20,000 or the deal's off?

So, what do you do? Stump up the extra £20,000 ..... if you can. Or write off the £1000 in surveys and perhaps £500 more in legal fees? And why? Because I broke the deal, quite legally, and broke my word, to stitch you up. I deliberately waited until you'd paid enough out that you would be reluctant to back out, and then gouged you for more money. Are you going to be happy with that? Buying and selling houses isn't one of the three or four most emotionally stressful things we ever do in life (along with things like death of a spouse, divorce or losing your job) for no reason, you know.

But that can't happen in most forms of contract because it would be a breach. For that matter, it can't happen in many other jurisdictions because property deals work in different ways, such as with sealed bids, or with the original deal we made being binding, subject to the "due diligence" working out with surveys etc not showing up problems. In those jurisdictions, you don't make the offer unless you're prepared to go through with it. That, IIRC, includes Scotland.

So please don't tell me about offer and counter-offer, because that's very familiar to me. What I'm talking about is either the sort of gazumping I described here, or about agents making decisions for their client without even bothering to tell their client they've had an offer.

And in that particular case, that was far from the only stunt that agent pulled. For example, his vendor told the agent what price he wanted (say, your £350,000), and what price he'd accept at the very minimum (say, £325,000). The agent printed leaflets at £350,000 and advertised the property at that price for about three weeks. Then, without telling the vendor let alone getting permission, changed the asking price to that £325,000 minimum and re-advertised. That is NOT the agent's prerogative. I know this because when the offer from me came in somewhat lower than the minimum price, the vendor told me he was surprised it was that low. I said it wasn't much lower than the £325,000 he was asking for and he showed me the leaflet the agent had given him (at £350,000) and the contract. So I showed him the £325,000 leaflet the agent had given me and the newspaper ad. The seller was incandescent, and rightly so.

I've had this sort of thing happen to me more than once. If it does happen, then it destroys any trust between buyer and seller. I will stick to my word when I make a deal, and I expect the other party to do so too. If they prove, by their actions, that they can't be trusted, then I walk away. If they try to kipper you once and miss, you certainly can't assume they won't try again, and maybe succeed. I won't give them the chance to try a second time.

Not everyone is unscrupulous. In the case I mentioned where the agent changed the price, once I showed the vendor the flyer and newspaper ad at the amended price, he accepted that I was acting in good faith and the offer wasn't just a low-ball try-on. And he dealt on the basis of the price the agent had amended it to, even though he hadn't known about it. But oh boy, was he angry with the agent. The vendor, I trust. And still do. I still see him from time to time. The agent? He went bust a year or two later, to many cheers from round here.

Saracen, very biased post IMO, I am guessing you haven't sold many properties? (Neither have I personally, but my parents have sold many and bought many, therefore I know how they think).

I'm not sure what you're basing your guess on, but I'll point one thing out. From what you said there, it's a pretty good chance I bought my first house before you were born. Not everyone on this forum is either in their teens or twenties, and I for one will never see 50 again. Unfortunately.

Biased post? I pointed out I was talking from personal experience. I didn't say all agents are sharks, just that from that personal experience, they're all sharp operators and some, while staying legal, are certainly not staying moral ... including just about every one I've ever dealt with. And while I only mentioned things that have happened to me personally, I also mentioned that the solicitor I used is a family friend and has been doing our conveyancing for decades (above and beyond the 30+ years I've been using him), and you ought to hear the stories he tells about estate agents and their antics. Do I say all agents are like this? Well no, but based on a near 100% hit rate of sharks from personal experience, it seems like a reasonable bet.

So am I biased? If I am, it's because I learned from experience. I'd be pretty stupid if I didn't, and because I've been on the pointy end of the deals so I figure I have grounds to hold the opinion I do. You're entitled to your opinion, but I'm basing mine on what happened to me, not what my parents told me. If you want to call that bias, fair enough.

[Saracen]

Now regarding this situation, I have spoken to the parents about it and you can't do anything at all, but when you put an offer in you should get a letter back to state you have done so, and you can use this if something goes wrong regarding anything to do with the offer etc.

Not in England and Wales you can't. If something goes wrong with the offer and contracts haven't been exchanged, your stuffed. That's the whole problem. Offers aren't binding, and neither are acceptances. Only exchanged contracts. And, according to another solicitor friend, even then it can be a theoretical binding, not a practical one.

That solicitor friend had a house purchase of his own fall through. On the day he was supposed to move in, the buyer decided not to sell. The deposit was returned, and they decided to stay put.

Theoretically, a court could order them to surrender the property as binding contracts had been exchanged. But, as I said earlier, courts don't like ordering specific performance, so much more likely would merely have been the award of a sum in compensation for expenses incurred by the breach of contract. The sum involved was sufficient that it was a too high for the small claims track, and even as a solicitor doing his own legal work, that friend was of the opinion that it wasn't worth the time and hassle of a court case to fight for compensation.

So his purchase fell through way after exchange of contracts and though he could have sued, he didn't. Before contracts are exchanged, any letter with the details of the offer, in England and Wales, is entirely useless. It's merely evidence of an offer, and utterly unenforceable.

[Saracen]

some food for thought, thanks saracen! your posts are always full of good advice, but being dyslexic means i have to book a day off work to read them.

Sorry, j. Better book a week for the last couple.

[Vroomparrot]

The estate agent who sold me my current house looked a lot like David Dickinson - 'nuff said really.

[j1979]

The estate agent who sold me my current house looked a lot like David Dickinson - 'nuff said really.

could have been worse !!

[Jay]

my house was sold as "having a brand new roof" it was clear it was an actually an old roof that needed replacing.

I got a guy in to have a look and I needed an entire new roof putting on the house! I used it to get the price down though.

Offer what you are willing to pay, its a buyers market.

[j1979]

well after no contact from the EA about the 53k offer i made, i decided to stretch to my upper limit and outbid the current offer of 55k.

so on Monday i called the EA to be told that the 55k offer from the "couple" had been accepted.... so on Tuesday i put in an offer of 56 only to be called back and told that the seller had accepted an offer of 58.5k from the other "company"

what can i do, im sure they are lying / braking some law somewhere. is there any laws that could help me get the truth.. IE freedom of info act or something similar?? im 99.9% sure that there is no other Couple or Company... im also 99.9% sure the EA's need a good shoeing

[GheeTsar]

TBH I'd leave it and consider another property.

[Lanky123]

Go find another estate agent and make it very clear that you're doing so. If they're lying and have no other bidders they'd have no reason to continue if they think you're running to a competitor. If they aren't then you're up against some stiff bidding competition for that property anyway, so maybe it wasn't to be however much you like it.

The ideal situation would be finding a better place at a better price, AND having the old estate agent ring up and say that, funnily enough, the other bidder dropped out and your bid is now accepted. That way you would get a better flat and get the pleasure of telling the estate agent where to shove it.

[GoNz0]

i got outbid and said, "thanks anyway" and hung up. 10 days later i got a call back saying the other party pulled out and the seller would like to offer it at the final price we stated.

tell em your walking away as thats all your money gone. hang up before they get chance to say anything and if you dont get a call back after 2 weeks, look for another house.

[Flash477]

Personally I would phone back and say that I have decided to make a final offer lower than my original stating that you have had a 3rd party view the house and know that there are no other bidders. Leave it like that, you will either get the flat at a reduced price or you won't, but knowing what the agent is like I would not view any further properties from them.