Foxtons aren't all bad! (Foxtons)

Member Name: snowylulu

Product:	Foxtons
Date:	13/02/06 (2188 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Informative website, good coverage in London, get people through the door to view your property

Disadvantages: tendency to overprice property

Having just read all the negative reviews about Foxtons has prompted me to try to go some way towards redressing the balance, speaking from my own experience.

While fully admitting that they often come over as too pushy, flashy and slick for their own good, like any organisantion, Foxtons is the sum of its parts, and like most companies, has both good and bad employees. I was very lucky in that I don't think I would have sold my old property or managed to move into the flat where I am extremely happy now without the help of the negotiator who was assigned to show me round properties in East London. He alerted his colleagues to my old flat going on the market, as it transpired it had at some stage before my ownership been rented out to a former Foxtons agent who had worked at that branch, and was consequently familiar to many of the negotiators working there. As a result I had a good number of viewings.I was always asked in advance if it was Ok for people to come round and never had a problem with rudeness or lack of professionalism from the sales staff showing applicants round. We had a serious offer at a good price within 5 weeks of the flat going on the market.

I was shown some extremely nice properties, always ones I had specifically requested or been shown details of in advance, and when my offer on a flat I had fallen in love with fell through, the negotiator spent considerable time looking out other flats that fitted my requirements. I was only shown properties which met all my specifications. After one offer falling though, I eventually found a flat through another agency, but much to my consternation, as the sale was going through by this point, things started going wrong a couple of weeks after my offer had been accepted, and the selling agent, although well meaning, couldn't seem to come up with ideas to solve the problem. I got in touch with my contact at Foxtons, and over the next three months he spent hours giving me advice, checking e-mails I had drafted to managing agents , solicitors etc and even on a couple of occasions dealing with my panic attacks!He was extremely knowledgeable and was able to come up with a practical solution to every problem. This is fairly remarkable in that he had nothing to gain at all from helping me buy a property through another agent.

I moved into my current flat last Summer and absolutely love it. So to me the moral of the story is don't write Foxtons off completely- while I am sure that like every company,they take on some unhelpful sales staff, there are also some good eggs out there who actually know what they're talking about.They have some very nice properties on their books, and will also get plenty of people through the door to view if you are selling.

To end on a rather more cynical note, the guy who helped me out has since left Foxtons, but he is working for another London agency, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend him to anyone else out there in despair of ever finding a genuinely approachable estate agent.

Summary: Your experience of Foxtons depends a lot on the negotiator you deal with - some are very good.