Are estate agents really that bad?

Yes, they are. Money for old rope is their industry’s slogan. If I ever had to move, I wouldn’t use a high street agent unless they can prove they’re worth their exorbitant fee (so, unlikely then). Where else do you pay that much and receive that level of poor service?

The problem with estate agents (I think) is that if they are great (get a good price for your house, help you find a house without driving you up the wall) then they are essentially just doing their job. But if they are bad they can ruin so many crucially important things. And the way they are incentivised does not always benefit their customers – the people whose houses they are selling.

A certain estate agent (will remain nameless) sold me my flat, but only after misleading me and accepting a lower offer than mine. When I found out and marched down there I found out it was because the other buyer was willing to get a mortgage through their broker and was also willing to use their solicitor. So although they were selling the flat for less money (and ripping off the seller) the agent would get more commission from the mortgage company and the solicitor than they would from the sale.

On the other hand, there’s a lovely estate agent in East London who rented me property a few years ago and was friendly and sweet and helpful. He got workmen round as soon as there was a problem with anything, occasionally fixed things himself, and even donned a pair of gloves and spent a whole day helping me load unwanted furniture into a skip when I moved in.

Any industry that pays the majority of a salary as commission is likely to be unpopular with the majority of consumers, as they are likely to only have they’re own pay check in mind.

I’m an estate agent and would agree entirely that some are horrendous and some are great. My background is running a law firm and we used to hear so many conveyancing clients, buyers and sellers, seriously upset about the way agents dealt with them, that we decided there had to be room in the market for a seriously friendly, professional, fairly priced, honest and transparent estate agency in our region (Hull and East Yorkshire) so we set one up and we’re loving it. I always enjoy seeing the cowboys revealed (e.g. Mary Portas on estate agents) as in time it will hopefully mean more business for us and it just keeps me going, reminding me why we went into it in the first place. The letters of thanks from sellers and buyers alike help too!!

Ditto in relation to our lettings and management service too!!

“I thought I had faith with this Agent (ROFLE EAST) as established in my area. Put down over a thousand pounds deposit as security against a possible rental. Nethertheless things did not go to plan and no paperwork, contract, terms & conditions or receipt was issued. Requested the deposit back but was given waffle and confusion as to why they were keeping it. They were not even aware the difference between a HOLDING DEPOSIT & A SECURITY DEPOSIT.Made complaint to H.O. – NO REPSONSE…!, – Kept asking for deposit back and got one load of Bull after another. Having now to persue through the Courts – PLEASE BEWARE, I think these are NOT PROFESSIONALS and give the industry a very bad name.”

[Hi Tryingtotakemymoney, we’ve slightly edited your comment as some parts were potentially libellous – mods]

Am I alone in despising estate agents or do they treat everyone as badly?

Basically we have had our house on the market for a couple of months and we are now getting phone calls and cold callers from agents promising to sell our house in a few weeks. I have told them we are not interested in changing agents but the calls and visits keep coming. One in particular (who will remain nameless) has not only phoned, but has sent us a letter making an appointment to see us, and even turned up for that appointment when we specifically rang up and asked them not to.
Surely there must be law or code of conduct that these people should adhere to?

Last July I posted about a problem I was having with Haarts Estate Agents. Since then we were given back our cheque for £150.00 and they were going to change their policy on their charges- A result.
We have also been through two more estate agents and two failed sales because of communication between solicitors and estate agents letting me know only what I need to know and consequently leading to a failed sale….I’m furious that these so called managers of estate agents appear to think they know better than you about selling your house and have made mistakes after mistakes at my expence.
My life and that of my husbands have been put on hold since Christmas 2011 .I have handed in my notice as we thought change of contracts were going to happen end of March….BIG MISTAKE!
We then after TWO weeks waiting found out our buyers buyer was unable to secure her job! I was fuming, how can mortgage lenders and estate agents allow this to happen?? We then had to put our house back on the market and now waiting that our third 1st time buyer goes through the process with little problems…I hold my breath! The moral of this story- DON’T TRUST AN ESTATE AGENT,THEY ONLY RIP YOU OFF!

May i just chuck in my observation into the ring. Estate agents are most definitely not professionals. Professionals are bound by an institution that administers the standards of that said profession. A Doctor a Lawyer an Accountant and Engineer in order to use their title of Solictor, Barrister, Chartered Engineer, Auditor etc all must satisfy their said professional body that they have achieved some industry regognised level of ‘professionalism’ and all are bound by certain rules and regulations of conduct and performance.
Ah hah i hear soomeone say. We have the property ombudsman. The ombudsmand has no power to administer punitive fines against poor performance, neither can they stop someone operating as an estate agent. Anyone with a bronze swimming certificate, white socks and slip on shoes can rent a corner newsagents and stick up a few photos of houses and call themselves a ‘Professional’ estate agent. They are not professionals any more than a dustman is a refuse engineer or a bookie a turf accountant.
Estate agents are the only people i know who are trusted by the unsuspecting public to supposedly sell your house and are trusted with the negotiations where they have absolutely no responsibility and accept no liability for loosing you money and to boot they have a massive conflict of interest, can say and do what they will in front of your purchaser ( ‘i’m sure they’ll take a little less’) and we being gullible saps let them – the whole system of buying and selling a house is bizarre and archaic and rigged for estate agents to fleece the market.
Unprofessional, ill educated, non qualified, self interested and self agrandisinig bunch of carpet bagers. Do not trust them!

If you are in the process of selling or buying a house it’s really worth looking at two other Conversations on here called “Are estate agents deliberately overvaluing properties?” and “How would you value estate agents?”.

Yes some estate agents really are bad.I am due in court over a commission claim and the agent a member of the NAEA states they dont have to comply with the NAEA regulations it is all a farce and needs proper regulation

Having recently had a very bad experience with a local well known Estate Agent, and after many hours of work in writhing many letters of complaint to the so called regulatory bodies, I can only come to the conclusion that they are all in it together, because even though the Estate Agent, had been found to have broken several of the regulatory regulations, I was only awarded the measly sum of £200, and a letter of apology by the Agent.Therefore, my advice to anyone, is to avoid Estate Agents at all costs and sell your own home, I have done this several times and will never use an Estate again as long as I live. Since their dishonesty in my experience, is beyond belief.

The latest scam by agents is to advertise a property with a “homewise” price in large type, with the real price (£150,000 more!) in smaller type later on in the advert. Apparently these homewise prices apply to those over 60, and involve some kind of equity withdrawal scheme. This company is based in Worthing, and may well be worth investigating by Which?

What gets me is when they charge full whack for a house they know they can sell with little or no effort. If you know you live in a desirable location or the catchment area of a good school, you should consider going it a lone. Perhaps use a site to list your house for free and judge the market. You can always bring in an estate agent when you are good and ready… if you really want to!

[This commented has been edited to align with Which? Conversation guidelines]

Just in case anyone has sold their flat to a buyer who is using the home wise scheme – DON’T DO IT. I cannot speak for their home equity release side of the business, but I will share my experience to give you an idea of how this ‘business’ works and in my opinion, what bunch of liars this lot are.

I was offered a great price for my flat in June – was put under quite a lot of pressure by the pushy negotiator who insisted that they could close the sale and complete in 6 weeks, as this was a cash purchase with no chain.

‘Great’ I thought – hassle free chain free fast sale, just what I wanted.

LIE 1…….

After wondering when the surveys etc would take place and after a but of badgering a month later as to why we hadn’t heard anything, it turns out that the ‘cash sale’ is in fact being funded by the sale of buyers property. I don’t know which planet that constitutes a cash sale!

Now, I think I should have walked away at this point as I’ve clearly been mislead, but at the same time, the high offer was still very appealing, and was higher than I was likely to get from another buyer, so decided to hang in there, albeit with a question mark on the morals of Homewise to blatantly lie in writing about the cash sale/ chain situation.

LIE 2
We get to august – past the 6 week completion date, and I find out no legals have been issued yet. Cue panic, moany phone calls etc. Finally come September all legals completed bar a few nitpicky bits which seemed to be raised purely for the purpose of holding things up. What part of this is in line with the 6 week completion date?

Lie 3
Finally lose my rag in October, as after being told for 3 weeks that we would be ready to exchange ‘next week’ we find out NOT from homewise, but from the agent down the chain – i.e. people buying homewise customers property that he is no longer continuing with the sale of his property, nor the purchase of mine. So looks like they had no intention of bothering to tell us that the sale had fallen through.

So in conclusion, what started in June and should have been done and dusted by late august latest has been dragged on and on, and eventually ended in a chain collapse for 5 people.

Don’t risk selling your property to anyone using homewise, they will lie to your face to get your property and then cease communication as soon as an issue arises.

Doesn’t say much for how they do business, and is not a surprise that they are not selling a registered product via their ‘Equity release’ wing.

Scam artists through and through, don’t waste your time on these clowns.

We instructed an estate agent to sell our house at the beginning of June. It started off good but soon deteriorated. We were not getting any feedback for up to 2 days after the viewings and one viewing with one adviser from the Estate agents wouldn’t show prospective buyers the garden because she had the wrong shoes on! We feed this back to the agents and said is was unacceptable and should be prepared for this kind of thing. Then the viewings slowed down. We asked what was wrong with our house and to generally get some advice from their point of view. We had the Branch Manager come for a meeting with us to discuss an she acknowledged that our pictures and details on the particulars was incorrect and in one case our Workshop was completely missed off the details.. He suggested a plan and we said we would like to think about it and then contact him back about it. But when we called and left a message for him to say we would like to proceed we never heard from him for 4days in that time they had removed our house from the website. We raised an official complaint to their head office and they acknowledged by letter and email but since then it’s gone silent.
We then had a call from the Branch ?Manager who then proceeded to tell us that he won’t terminate our request to stay with them or even entertain the idea of multiagency and even if we remove our property from sale we cannot put it on with another agent for 20 weeks which at the initial start we were told 12weeks. My husband is going down to the offices today in person for a second time to try and resolve or at least get a reasonable answer from them on how to proceed or get our house keys back at which they are reluctant to hand over.? They are our property! We are now suffering a great deal of stress and upset over these agents and we cannot even go with another agent who is at present, trying to help us by offering advice on how to proceed. My husband will try and talk to them again today and see what happens.
Is there any advice that Which can offer us to try and resolve this horrendous experience?

Estate agents don’t get their fees until after completion of the sale so they are desperate to protect their commission by having long tie-ins for sole agency and no quick escape clauses if the sale drags for any reason. This state of affairs is bad enough, but when it is accompanied by an inflated valuation, or misleading statements on the saleability of the property or on the ‘readiness’ of a prospective buyer, it becomes almost unmanageable for the seller because there is more going on out of sight to do with the negotiator’s bonus, the branch’s sales performance, an invisible chain of interconnected sales behind the immediate prospective purchaser, potential mortgage and insurance sales commissions, and possible cosy deals with buy-to-let investors [on which the agency can look forward to future management fee income].

The whole process can be far from transparent and although agents are under a duty of care to their instructing sellers it is hard to avoid the conclusion that sometimes they are acting on both sides of the fence. The law requires an agent to declare if there is a conflict of interest [possibly because another member of the firm is involved] but compliance with these rules is frequently done in a virtually incomprehensible manner so it goes unchecked. It is almost impossible to find out from the internet what the terms of business and commission levels of the agents in a district are so it is vital to see them in their offices and get all relevant information about their sales process and meet the actual staff who will be handling the sale. Bear in mind that before an agent can sell the property he or she has to “sell” their firm to the seller of the property so there are two types of sales technique going on during that first interview. Personally, I would only instruct an agent with a lengthy track record in the district, seek the opinion of my solicitor/conveyancer [who deals with many different agents all the time], and who has a substantial street presence with real bricks and mortar with an active approach to marketing through several media. Estate agents’ adverts in local newspapers probably don’t sell many properties these days and they are more about recognition and presence in the market place, but tracking the adverts over a period of weeks before choosing an agent will show up which firms are really on the ball and working conscientiously for their sellers; those that stuff the pages with unsold properties or are constantly promoting ‘new’ [i.e. lower] prices for the same old stock should be regarded with caution. It’s also worth pretending to be a buyer and seeing how you get treated, and the quality of service and response that they provide.

I have no experience of dealing with on-line agencies and at the moment there is very little objective information about their performance. In the four years since this Conversation was started there have been seismic shifts in the property market and the conditions affecting it, and on-line agencies and new marketing platforms are appearing all the time. They all say they have the fullest market penetration and universal expertise but we know that can’t be true, so it is advisable to tread warily and not be lured by the unrealistic hyping of valuations, exaggeration of the selling potential, and optimistic market forecasts presented in a pseudo-scientific style. The problem is that once you have signed the terms of business you are stuck for a lengthy period. If I could change anything as a priority it would be the long exclusivity terms which are not equally balanced between the interests of the seller and the agent.

Estate agents are leeches who do nothing and blame anyone, only to come out of the situation caused by their incompetence! I worked as a supervisor in a company for residential services, many times agents accused our workers incompetence because of problems in houses / apartments arising from old age. In one case – the estate agent charge 800 GBP previous tenants for old carpets /over 5 years old/ damaged by natural wear and tear, the tenants had lived 1 year in the house, this is ridiculous! Another case – whole bathroom is in mould, ruined paint, damaged by limescale shower head /cheap new is 5-6 gbp in store/ and again – our workers are unproffecionals because they couldn’t restore it with cleaning! The bathroom and the whole property is crying for refurbishment and decorating but the estate agents have different opinion!
Not so dear “estate agents” – you are entrusted you to care for them, not only to dispose like a boss and wondering how to lie, to steal a deposit to someone, and not to invest and 1p in any houses. If you think that is not your job to make something for your customers – may be is not the right job for you!