Estate agents, the real truth (Estate Agents in general)

Member Name: sympatic

Product:	Estate Agents in general
Date:	07/08/08 (78 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Necessary evil I guess

Disadvantages: Not to be trusted

When it comes to buying or selling a house you are pretty much guaranteed that you will have to go through an estate agent.

It is important to remember that estate agents actually supposed to work for the seller in any transaction, they will always make out that they are your best friend and there to get you the best deal but at the end of the day they are working first and foremost for themselves.

The reason behind this is that they only get paid when a house actually sells, when all the legal work has been done and the purchase as completed, the they tak a commission in the form of a percentage of the sale, this can be anything from 1.5% up to 4.5% in my experience, even if they have done next to nothing or spent weeks arranging buyers they still get the same. You would think that the more they get for it the better for them but if you think that every extra thousand they get only translates to £10 forthem you can see that all they care about is the sale and not the actual price. Now that £1000 could mean a lot to you but not to them.

There are estate agents on every high street and certainly the big chains do seem to attract a certain type of employee, young mid to late twenties and think they are the dogs dangly bits when in fact they are just salesmen with a reputation for dodgy practices.

Summary: Estate agents, the real truth