Reply With QuoteI would expect to see offers over, offers in the region of, or fixed price. How else would you know if the property is in your price bracket.Originally Posted by adrianw
My son is ready to buy his own place, He has been saving and has a mortgage offer, he has started looking at properties in his price range, recently he has found two places that he likes, both advertised on right move and with local agents, he has viewed them both then it all seems to go a bit odd, the first one was advertised at £260k, he liked it so said yes, then the agent came back and said no! it is offers above £260k, I saw the adverts, they said £260k there was no mention of offers above,. even more odd was the vendor said she had received an offer but not close to her asking price.
The next one was exactly the same story.
I know estate agents have an awful reputation but how can this be right? obviously we don't know what the agent is telling the seller, it certainly does not help first time buyers who have just managed to scrape together what they think is enough for the property they are viewing, it turns it into a waste of everyone's time.
I would expect to see offers over, offers in the region of, or fixed price. How else would you know if the property is in your price bracket.
Exactly, it seems that they are trying to bump the advertised prices up, maybe they expect some people to get sucked in and just pay more.
Maybe in the area we live demand is high enough that they think they can do this
If you are in contact with the sellers, get them to instruct the Estate agents to sell the house at the asking to your son? Sounds like they are trying to get an auction going.
Cheers..
Jase
Agents are legally bound to pass on all offers regardless of how much. Make a formal offer and ask for feedback.
It is up to the seller to accept or reject the offer.
I won't bore you with my lack of love for the industry - But to answer your question/concern. Adverts normally fall into the following categories, unless they are sold via an auction or unlikely to get a mortgage and therefore aimed at cash buyers ;
Offers in excess of - Clue in the title
Guide price, such as £300K to £350K. Normally this means the vendor is hoping for the upper end
Advertised price - Does what it says on the tin.
If the vendor wants a higher price, then the agent should advertise it accordingly. The other point worth noting is the agent is obliged to put all offers forward.
Hope this helps.
Here is the listing
http://www.forgehomes.co.uk/fulldetails.php?pid=4257519
I see it that the agent has it all his own way, all he has to do is present the offer but say to the vender "you can do better"
Check the agent is actually still representing the vendor. I have at least one proven experience where the agent was still advertising the property after a sale had been agreed through a different agency. They were hoping that they could take an offer above asking price back to their client and use it to gazump the agreed sale through the other agent.
The agent lied for about 2 weeks before being found out.
I do know some decent estate agents, but when you are a buyer you don't have a lot of choice over the agent.
They're the same local to me too. They want every house to end up in a bidding war.
I like how they've described it as "unique" which in plain speaking English means difficult to sell in a quiet market?
It is very nice, I went with him when he viewed, that is how I know exactly what the seller said,
to me it seems a fortune for that place, but I haven't bought a house in the UK for over 20 years.
We're looking to move in the coming year (absolutely dreading it to be honest but we need more space) so on our searches we'd see somewhere online for the right price, start getting excited, and then notice the 'Offer in excess of…' tag line. OK, here's an offer for £1 in excess of the advertised price.
Agents will do anything to bump the price up – fair enough, that's their job – but what pi55es me off is the fact that the advertised price is now meaningless. If it doesn't sell, it'll come down to that price anyway and people are then led to believe it's a bargain. Just advertise an asking price, submit offers to the vendor, vendor then decides what to accept.
When we come to sell ours I'll be insisting the price advertised is the price we are happy to accept – no messing about with closed bids, offers in excess of, open house viewings and all the other guff they try to inflate market.
I hate all estate and letting agents I have met through property transactions with a passion. I assume there are some which are competent but I have had the misfortune of never meeting them (despite renting or purchasing in 3 different cities over 7 years). Fortunately, the last flat I purchased was marketed with Purplebricks which minimised the contact required with the selling agent (though he was one of the better ones!).
If I was your son, I would put in an offer of what he feels the property is worth regardless of the asking price. The worst which will happen is that the veodor will say no. As above, the agent has to pass on all offers to them unless they have specifically instructed the agent to decline offers of less than £XXX. I don't know that area but I assume it is not a unique property/the only similar one available so if he can't get any joy or the offer is rejected then probably best to move on.
I don't see anything that says "offers above..." Adrian so completely see how you could be annoyed with the scenario. I also see that every photograph taken is slanted downwards; I really hate estate agents that sell expensive properties and don't use proper photographers, but I guess I am biased with that :-D
Sounds very underhand to me, mind you how estate agents can pass up offers of the asking price in todays market is beyond me, I thought they'd have been happy to haggle.
Tell you what though, £260k doesn't buy much down there does it? Fetch him up North, that sort of wedge would buy him one of these;
Say what you like about the North/South divide, I do NOT envy those house prices.
stick to your guns. find out what its sold price was and amend to the current market value/what you want to pay
https://houseprices.io/?q=the+chase+newhall
they are acting in the interests of the seller so will always try to get you to up you offer. they will also lie so be very firm and play hardball with:
“i’m about to put an offer in elsewhere if i don’t hear back from you”
“thats it, even if i wanted to offer more that is my budget that i have to stick to”
“my offer stands until XX of the XX”
do not get sucked in to their lies or get emotional, this is a business transaction.
The other thing to remember is, if your son is a first-time buyer he has no chain, which should make him more attractive to the seller, who might be willing to shave a few £000s off to mitigate the risk of the whole thing collapsing later on
apologies, I should have made it clear, he has moved on and is looking at other places
As already said they are legally bound to put your offer forward. You are chain free, mortgage approved and ready to go, makes you a lot more desirable than anyone needing to sell. A decent agent will know that and explain to their client.
Two comments I will make that will seem in defence of estate agents (it's not at all just worth knowing):
1. The estate agent works for the Vendor as they are the agents client and not yours. whilst they have to act in an appropriate manor for both parties, it is the Vendor paying their fee and their duty is to sell that property and if possible get the best price.
2. I never get the bit about 'the agent just wants more commission'. If an agent is selling for £200,000 at 1.5% they get £3,000 in commission. If they manage to get £205,000 they get £3,075. Whilst getting a higher price makes a happier Vendor and extra commission, that extra £75 is quite frankly, gee whizz! The agent is far more concerned about the actually sale going through, in other words the quality of the buyers - can they actually complete on that property like they say they can.
Being an IFA with 6 mortgage advisers in our practice, we have dealings with agents numerous times a day. Like in all professions, there are good, bad and indifferent. As most of my time is actually spent on my properties now, I have personal dealings as well. Most agents are absolutely fine. I live in Devon though and generally when we do mortgages for clients in London or other cities the agents are more I guess 'hardball'. I was going to say ruthless but that's a bit unfair. I think city mentality is a lot more fast pace.
I was one of the hated for over 25 years.
Multi-listing is the reason for half of the problems in the south, as many agents are appointed and only the original listing firm and the firm who eventually introduce the buyer will be paid, so that leads to each agent competing with one another and often a confused seller.
In order to try and ascertain the agents involved, pop the post code in Rightmove and you will see the total number of adverts. That does’t do a great deal, but at least you’ll know how many you are dealing with. If you change agent at this time, you’ll just start a fight - great isn’t it.
At the end of the day an agent is charged with achieving the best possible price for their client, the seller. That doesn’t allow bad practice, but often does.
As has been stated already, current regulations require all offers to be communicated in writing to the seller, unless they have specific instructions not too. Those instructions will have been provided by the seller in writing. Therefore, unless they can show you said instructions, your offer should be communicated - ask to see a copy of the offer to the seller.
If all else fails and the seller is in residence - pop round. Don’t whine on about the agent - they may like them. Just point out you are trying to buy and are simply ensuring they are aware of your interest.
Anything specific, I’m happy to help.
There's nothing like the above in the part of the North where I live. You can pay half a million quid for a two bed flat up here too (York).Sounds very underhand to me, mind you how estate agents can pass up offers of the asking price in todays market is beyond me, I thought they'd have been happy to haggle.
Tell you what though, £260k doesn't buy much down there does it? Fetch him up North, that sort of wedge would buy him one of these;
Say what you like about the North/South divide, I do NOT envy those house prices.
Steve's approach has worked for me and in a situation similar to yours. I had my ducks in a row to back up an offer an agent was adamant would be refused. They were smug when telling me it had been rejected and not believing them I went around to the house, met the vendor who was pissed off as they'd not seen my offer. We shook hands and the agent was cut loose.
It's very easy to check market data and if you set alerts on sites like rightmove you'll see trends, such as reduced etc.
I live and am currently selling in Brighton and what I can tell you is the markets is approx 10% lower than it was in Q1 2016
Sounds pretty stupid. At least some honest feedback like the seller is actually wanting more even if it's advertised wrong.
We were looking at some and the estate agent showing us knew absolutely nothing about the property. Nothing. Everything you asked was back at the office. I didn't throw them a curve ball by seeing this house, it was booked in, plenty of time to get some info ready to reel off! That viewing made us take our house off the market as it was with the same agent. I had zero confidence in them.
Why are they so bad?!
because its a job people end up with, nobody willingly becomes an estate agent. imagine a lifetime of watching peoples faces drop when you reply to the “so what do you do?” question.
it’s also an environment that encourages lying and being economical with the truth, it’s supposedly regulated and with a code of conduct but that means nothing to the fat tongued, fat tied and shiny suited.
thing i find about these properties is the sevice charges £1400 pa.
Thats 14 grand extra if you stay ten years !!
My experience of agents is the opposite. I am in a chain and have been for 8 months with various collapses below me. The effort the agents have gone , both above and below to keep the chain alive have been nothing short of excellent.
I think the real work goes on behind the scenes, the amount of buyers who get cold feet, weeding out time wasters etc, keeping the chain alive. If the agents did the chasing up I think many a sale would have collapsed for me. Solicitors are more likely to screw up a sale than an agent - yet an agent gets a lot slack.
I've got a quite a number of BTLs too and again, I have never met an agent that doesn't want the house to sell. Buying a house brings out the worst in someone's character, lies bull , people who say they're chain free when they're not- and they have to deal with all of that! Buyers /Sellers lie a lot more than agents.
Over £200 I had a buyer who was willing to jeopadise a chain of 7 that had £5million of property in in not to forget just shy of £100k of commission across all agents.
I do not work as an agent etc just my honest experience.
Adrian, having just sold my house in Letchworth and one in Stokenchurch and tried to buy 3 houses near Marlow area I can totally understand your annoyance . House in Letchworth sold very close to asking price, though I offered it fully furnished the buyer opted for a sale only 2.5k less than the asking price unfurnished ! The house in Stokenchurch made 5k more than I marketed it for ! 4 buyers bidding against each other for the place which perplexed me totally , as it's honestly not that nice at all but, at the lower end of the housing market, ....but what's a seller to do when this happens , I took the best offer based on the position the buyer was in.
3 separate properties I offered on in the Marlow area and the same thing happened to me, estate agent telling me even though I'd offered the asking price on 2 the houses were sold elsewhere to other buyers who offered over asking price , even though effectively I was a cash buyer !
It's not you , it's the market and the agents .
And this view is based on?
Don't agree with that at all. That's just stereotyping them.
I know many agents and they are all genuinely nice people and yes some actually wanted to do it as career.
I recently put an offer in on a house, the estate agent told me the offer had been accepted, my offer was based on them removing the property from Right Move etc, this didn't happen. I kept ringing and the agent they kept telling me it was a glitch with Right Move.
In the end I started to smell a Rat so wrote directly to the vendors, they came back to me and said we haven't accepted any offers!
The estate agent had been outright lying to me and stringing me along in the hope the vendor would at some point accept my offer.
So in my experience they are outright self serving liars and completely unprofessional. This is not the first time I've been lied to by estate agents and have friends with similar horror stories. They really are scum for the most part.
Stupidly amateur of an agent. A sales note should have been issued immediately , that carries more weight rather than being on or off on right move.
So, as soon as you had your offer accepted, you informed your lawyer, who in turn contacted the sellers lawyer and not forgetting the valuation surveyor who would want to pop round.
What was the period of time did you sit doing nothing until you smelt a rat?
Yours faithfully, Ex-Scum x.
I have been very pleased with my estate agent so far, compared to some of the absolute chancers I saw he's great.
some of them are just like S/H car salesmen or worse.
I've had 2 viewings already and the place isn't even listed yet, they have done everything they said they would and arrived on time for all appointments.
I cancelled the first estate agent I approached, as he immediately let me down and gave me a load of sales patter.
As mentioned, nearly all agents act for the vendor, to whom they owe their entire commercial duty. The intending purchaser is not part of that happy coupling.
Im astonished that using a buying agent isn't more widespread - in commercial property transactions, no sane corporate occupier would represent themselves (I've seen several that have and it's usually a sorry tale).
Because listings are instant and universal via websites, estate agents really only add value these days through detailed local market knowledge of who's selling/has sold what, and why, also what might be a good deal and what might be worth running away from - basically these days buyers need expert help much more than sellers do. And yet it's still the selling agents that dominate.
As for incompetence, there are no compulsory training requirements or ethics regulation of the estate agents trade.
Since the policy direction for real professions is towards removal of "barriers to entry" and commoditisation, that isn't going to change for the better any time soon - indeed quite the reverse.
I suspect future generations will look back at the early 21st Century and see it as a golden age of client service and professional behaviour.
Just like any other body of people, estate agents can vary in their service.
I've bought/sold nine times here in the U.K. and my experiences have ranged from ok to very, very good with the agents I've instructed. With the agents acting on behalf of my sellers however, a couple of them were very unprofessional and one in particular was an out-and-out liar.
FWIW, my agents were all sole traders/independents and the ones I had bad experiences of were part of a large chain: I did get the feeling that was a large factor in the varying levels of service I received.
R
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
Indeed, my lawyers contacted the estate agent to ask for the sellers lawyers details but they kept stalling and saying they had posted the pack of info when they hadn't.
It took me about a week to 10 working days to work out I was being given the run around by the Estate Agents, the seller was just as horrified as I was when they found out what their agent had been up to. As you stated earlier they are required to submit my offer in writing to the vendor but this hadn't been done either never mind telling me my offer had been accepted.
As I said unprofessional lying scum. I'm sure others have varying and better experience of them, I am just citing mine.
Last edited by Vanguard; 14th November 2016 at 18:01.
buying and selling property, meeting estate agents in the high end property game through work.
if i went about my business the same way, well i wouldn’t be in business! incompetence, arrogance, threats and overreaction (to a 2 day delay in a pice of paper from HMRC) and lies.
that said my partners estate agent (buying and selling) were totally different. probably due to being a small firm not a chain full of wide boys.
i still wouldn’t trust them and take anything they say with a pinch of salt.
My experience of estate agents has been overwhelmingly positive and contrary to popular belief the best to deal with have always been Foxtons.
I'm a Sales Director for a living and I know money talks of course so when I sell a place I always offer the agents 1.5% up to asking and 20% (twenty) for the amount above asking. Has netted me in average £40k extra every time. People think it's a load of money to pay but you are only paying it because they absolutely blast the sale for you with that motivation. Saving on agency fees is a false economy
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Last edited by ryanb741; 14th November 2016 at 19:56.
When I went to buy our house we had looked at another put in an offer and the estate agents said they were still waiting for a desision from the sellers days later, then when we had decided not to bother with it we miraculously got a phone call an hour later saying they had accepted our offer.
We then said we were no longer interested and got a snotty phone call later from the agents accusing us or ruining their sellers plans, the agents we used for the house we bought were fine though don't get me started on financial advisers
Not sure it would work so much in my part of the world, but I think that's a great idea indeed :-)
Yes should have pointed out this is in London
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Ryan, your inbox is full - nowt to do with estate agents
Now I see why everyone lists their property with Foxtons! They are clearly much better for the vendor than buyer
I was very keen not to buy anything listed by them as a) it was all overpriced IMO (I was justified by the reductions of the asking prices sometime later) and b) everytime I went with them on any viewings, they used it as an opportunity to show me anything on their books which wasn't meeting my requirements in multiple ways and then trying to convince me it was something I would want...
I do agree with incentivising agents to achieve a better asking price though, as above money talks and whilst you might have to pay them more commission, you are the ultimate winner
Slightly OT but whilst estate agents are solely paid for by the vendor, letting agents take bites of the cherry from both parties and in my experience never do anything for the tenant
When I want to sell, I will take a recommendation from Burnsey so I get to see the other side ;). Either that or go online only agent which was my other preference
Cleared it, apologies.Ryan, your inbox is full - nowt to do with estate agents
I am about to board a flight to Bangkok so if I'm slow to respond you know why :)
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Last edited by ryanb741; 14th November 2016 at 20:46.
Have to agree with this.
A few years ago, I was getting nowhere with a house that I was trying to buy. Called around to the house, had a chat with the seller, agreed a deal, shook hands with him, and it all went smoothly from there on in.
Remember that you're buying the house from the seller (why does the trade insist on calling them the "vendor"?), not from the agent, and there is nothing to stop you from agreeing a price directly between you.
Even if you're not happy talking directly, there's nothing to stop you putting a friendly note through their door saying something along the lines of "I really like your house and have just placed an offer of £xxx through <estate agents>"
We've just agreed to buy a house after keeping in touch with the seller after we both took our houses off the market. We kept them informed as we did some work to our place, stuck it back on the market and accepted an offer. The estate agent has been kept informed but has been a little bit confused that we already know what's going on before he calls. We both found the agent to be very disappointing, we started off with them and the people we're buying from stuck with them for a few months. After about four weeks they stopped being able to send round someone to show prospective buyers round the house, so we had to do it, and we then found the people looking round were looking for something completely differnt and apologetic that they'd been sent round to waste our time. Surprise surprise, the people we're buying from had the same treatment. We can't wait to get it over and done with.
"A man of little significance"
Wow !.....not that I honestly doubt you , as its your profession , but how does the multiple listing work ?
Is it multiple listings with the same selling agent , or actually multiple agents too ?
Up where I am , you choose the agent you want to go with and there is generally a £800-£1000 upfront cost for sellers survey and initial marketing fees.
Do people pay the marketing fees to all agents , or is it just so competitive down south that the marketing is free (built into the selling fees if they are lucky to strike the deal ?
I was always a northern agent, where sole agency is the norm, but the multiple listing process is common practice in the south and many other parts of the world.
Basically, the agent who gets the instruction acts as main agent, then the seller (or agent with sellers consent) can appoint as many others as they wish. The main agent and the agent who introduces the eventual buyer will share the fee at a pre-agreed split. The remainder will get nothing (usually).
The problem with this is the agents will often mistrust each other as they all want some of the fee, so contact the seller directly, make up their own ‘strategy’ (read change the price to get more enquiries) and generally faff around. Some agents will attempt to sell properties which they are not actually instructed to do - they live in the hope if they turn up with a buyer, the seller will ‘cut them in’.
The sad thing is, if a seller makes the correct choice of agent in the first place, they can stick with one and usually pay less.
Like many things - life in the south is different and to be honest, where agents get the most slagging off.
The main advantage of Scotalnd is not that the bidding system is different. It's that most of the agents are in fact solicitors.
Though no doubt some fast practice occurs, it's far less common. Not many are willing to risk their reputation or the wrath of their professional body.
This, the agent must legally inform the vendor of offers received. They have no right to reject any offer without referring to the vendor.
Posting Permissions
