MONEY FOR NOT MUCH (Estate Agents in general)

Member Name: leeanne160480

Product:	Estate Agents in general
Date:	04/10/08 (165 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: can't think of any

Disadvantages: lots of things

I've only had to use an Estate Agent once, and to be honest I'd rather try and do my marketing myself in the future.

Estate Agents have long had the reputation of Money Grabbers, Sharks and so on. So are they, or are they just doing a job like anyone else? Hard to say, as I only have my 1 experience, but their reputation surely didn't come out of nowhere.

Where we live there are the main Estate Agents that are Slater Hogg and Howison, Your Move, Delmore, Regents SJM and Century 21. When we were selling we went to Slater Hogg, as we'd saw a house we wanted to buy in their window. They asked if we had a house to sell and we arranged for one of their agents to come out and value our house.

So the woman came out and gave us the market price for the house and what they would put the price at and they explained how the offers over price worked and so on. So that was ok, but then I found that she become quite pushy after this point. At the start and even before she come to the house they kept saying how this was no obligation, if we weren't interested that was no problem, but this changed when she was sitting in our house. She had the paperwork out and I feel she was pushing for a sale. As we were still considering our options at this point, and not going to accept our first quote we said we were not signing anything. At that point she became our best friend again and it was back to the softly, softly approach.

After that experience we weren't going to open our doors and have the other companies in our house hassling up as well, as we all know how pushy sales people can be! I know it's up to us to decide what we want, and not be forced into doing something we didn't want, but neither myself or my husband are really forceful people, but that's not to say we are a pair of soft touches! We phoned the other companies to see how much they would take for the sale, and we found that each company seemed to be running from much the same script.

Slater Hogg was going to take 1.5% commission for our sale, but they knocked it down to a special offer price of 1.3%, which was probably the normal price in the first place. Some companies operate on a £1,000 fee, but that seemed to be on perhaps lower priced houses and on other houses it always seemed to be a % they took. There was VAT on top of this as well, and since our house sold for £148,000 I seem to remember the cost being around £2,400.

So what did we get for this cost? Well not a lot. When the rep come to our house they said that the best way to advertise was in the weekly paper and they offered a deal where we bought 1 ad in the paper for £128 and then they bought us one, so it was kind of buy one get one free. This sounded like a good offer considering, so we signed up for that. However we found out that they put the first ad in a week and a half after our house first going up for sale, and then they wanted to put their free ad in 3 weeks later. This may not sound like such a bad thing, as it will spread the coverage over a few weeks, but our house went up on the internet, and in their shop window, we got viewers the day after this and our house was sold even before the ad went in the paper. We tried to pull the ad from the paper to save a bit money, but were told it had already gone to print, so they got out of giving us our "free" ad.

Also they said when we signed up that one of their dedicated sales people would take care of all the viewings. We thought this was a good idea, as we'd never shown potential buyers around our house, and also that's their job, so they will have the gift of the gab! However we were asked if it was perhaps short notice, or Sundays or that, would we be willing to do our own viewings? We said yes, as we understood that the rep wouldn't be available 24/7. The rep ended up only doing half a viewing for us. What I mean by this, is that there was meant to be a couple coming at 2.30 one day and myself and my husband were both at home at this time, but the rep said she would come to do it. We thought we would go out for a walk, as we felt it odd to have 3 strangers walking about our house analysing it, just as we were leaving the viewers turned up, so we told them that the rep was on her way, and we'd just wait until she turned up. 15 minutes later she still wasn't there and the couple was getting impatient. So we started to show the couple around, then the rep phoned the couple to say she was running late. When she finally turned up it was in time to show the kitchen and garden, but by now the couple's mood had soured and they weren't best pleased by anything. Needless to say they never noted an interest in the house!

Also they said they would be right behind our house sale and basically negotiate a great price, as that was what they were good at, but when we got our first offer in for the house, they were being a bit pushy for us to accept it, even though it was lower than what we were looking for. It was like they were playing mind games, and saying if we didn't accept then the buyers may pull out and we'd never get that good an offer again! The people who put the offer in came for a 2nd viewing and offered us another £6,000, so we were glad we held out.

In my view they show the softly softly approach, but I guess once your house is up for sale with them, they want in their window as quick as possible to make room for another house in its place. Since they charged a flat fee, then it didn't matter if it was up for 1 day, or a year they would get the same money from you, so they will want a quick turnaround to maximise profit.

To summarise I think they are far too expensive for what you get. Paying nearly £2,500 for not a lot is a waste of money!

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