Here They Are to Bring you More Stress. (Estate Agents in general)

Member Name: katygriff

Product:	Estate Agents in general
Date:	17/05/06 (1330 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: They Find you a House.

Disadvantages: Lies, Hard-Sale.

You should all know by now that I am house hunting and if I have learnt one thing from the past four weeks or so it is this – you can never trust an estate agent 100%. Me and my boyfriend Dave have had such problems so far and this is why.

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Their job:

I decided recently to look into what the actual description of an estate agent is and this is what I came up with;

* A person who is authorised to act as an agent for the sale of land.

This description is bang on because what an estate agent actually does is sell and that is all they seem to know how to do but this is just my experience with the ones I have dealt with so any recommendations to me I would love.

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Their Offers:

As well as selling you a property many estate agents can also rent you properties and now they an also talk to you about mortgages, life insurance and contents and buildings insurance to. They can basically sell you most things to do with getting the house.

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Who are they?

There are so many estate agents that it is just impossible to list them all as they do depend many times on which area you are from. Here are a few that I no deal with houses where I want to live in the West Midlands.

Jayman.
DB Roberts.
Reeds Rains.
Dixons Countrywide.
Butters John Bee.

If you simply go onto the internet though and type in estate agents into google then you will have a long list for you to look through.

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My Experience:

So at first it did all start off very well indeed. I called one estate agents a few Sundays ago DB Roberts and they were great and very helpful as I told them about four houses that I wanted to view that day. They phoned me back within five minutes to give me the times for the viewings which were very suitable and they had taken into consideration the times I had told them I couldn’t do.

To be honest that day went very smoothly indeed apart from one thing and that is that there was absolutely no time for if you got lost. Of course we did and ended up being late for two appointments but this was just a niggly little thing. My problem came with them following the viewings.

Bear in mind that on the Sunday they had asked all about my situation so they had taken my mobile and home number and also they knew I worked full time. On the Monday after the viewings they phoned my house and my sister answered and told them I was at work and that they should try my mobile as I do not get home till late. They proceeded to ring another two times that day always on my home number so my sister by this point was going mental about it.

On the Tuesday they began to do it again but this time getting mad with my sister and moaning at her that she was not passing on her messages. I got home and sent them an email and left them a voice message to call my mobile. The following day again they hassled my sister until I finally got the number and phoned them during work in which they were then perfectly polite to me while I gave them my feedback.

The next problem I have with estate agents was with an experience with Reeds Rains. A woman from them had just shown us around a house and although the house was ok it was in the most awful state and the shared back garden looked awful. My sister had overheard the next door neighbours saying they were putting an extension in the garden so we thought no straight away but the woman carried on trying to sell us the benefits of this house although we had told her no.

She then decided to talk to us about mortgages and say that her firm was the best but I told her that that was what every firm had said and we already had spoken to her firm anyway so it makes me wonder if anybody actually knows anything about what everybody else does in that place.

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So What is the Problem?

The problem with estate agents is that they are sales people and as I used to be very much into sales I know exactly how they work. They are there to sell and sell they will do by using any means necessary which lets face it includes lying.

I have been standing in front of estate agents and they have been talking to me and lying directly to my face and I can’t believe they can do it and get away with it. One agent who was telling me about a fish and chip shop nearby did not attract any people and then two minutes later that it got really busy as they make good chips. This made me laugh and then she just kept contradicting herself so much that it was 100% laughable.

Another agent I have spoke to I was asking if it was a quiet area and she was saying no there is no trouble here and no gangs around. Two minutes later we had three youths in front of the house wandering around drunk before she admitted to me that the area once had a problem with ASBOS and it was just getting better. Now this kind of lie I just hate as imagine if we had moved there and then found out I would have been devastated.

Another problem I have with them is that they do not know enough about each house and bar knowing the postcode that is about all they know. Me and Dave got lost last Sunday and could not find our way at all. We phoned the estate agents and asked them to help and they could not at all. She told me the road that the house was on and the postcode and she said beyond that she had no idea. Thanks, great help you were!

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Verdict:

I am going to give this subject three stars because I know they are there to help you and on the whole they are the ones that advertise the houses so without their input we would probably get nowhere. I do not like their hard sell though and also the fact that I have met quite a few who are prepared to lie to me to get the sale.

Any recommendations to who are good let me know as I have found nobody yet.

Thanks for reading.

xxx

Summary: Stressful Times.