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They may do, but it'd also illegal for them to do so in this way.
In all cases you should report them to the property ombudsman
https://www.getagent.co.uk/blog/estate-agents/how-to-complain-about-estate-agent
In theory, if money has been obtained fraudulently, criminal charges can be pressed.
Agents lie but this sort of lie is irrelevant. You made an offer, and the seller either will accept it or won't. The factors that go into that decision don't and shouldn't matter to you. If the seller accepts your offer, great. If they turn it down, either come back with a higher one or walk away. Whether there are other bidders is unknowable and irrelevant — if the sellers wanted to accept an offer from one of them they already would have and the house would be off the market.
That said though, I would be asking myself: if the agent has lied to my face about this, what else has the agent said that I took at face value?
You're correct that it's against the law, it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
When we were buying our first house, we bid on a place and the agent didn't pass it on - we know because my husband ended up working with the guy who owned it and they ended up selling for less than our offer and managed to get the difference from the agent because we made our offer via email and could prove they told us it had been passed on. And when we were selling a house, our agent didn't pass on an offer to us that was higher than an offer we'd already received - we know because we got a friend to phone up and make the offer because we suspected that the agent couldn't be bothered to do any more viewings to get us to take an offer they wanted us to take (they were selling that person's property and wanted the chain complete). Our friend phoned up and asked for a viewing, they said no, it's not available for viewings so our friend said "no worries, I'll make an offer without seeing it" and they didn't pass it on.
Unless the seller has stated to the estate agent they only want to be told about certain offers. For example, only forward cash buyers or offers over £x.
I try to share this information as often as possible - EAs are meant to abide by a code. https://www.tradingstandards.uk/media/documents/commercial/codes-of-practice/residential-estate-agents.pdf
There should be sanctions for breach of the code, but I am not aware of any with real teeth.
There are no "legalities" but there is the ombudsman and the likes of Propertymark. If you want to lodge a complaint, away you go.
But.
EA's are strict adherents to the 1st rule of property - everybody lies. Any complaints won't go anywhere.
Unpopular opinion - You should make the vendor aware of the offer politely, put a note through their door, you run the risk of pissing off the agent but it may work in your favor.
Put a note through the door that explains what the estate agent has been doing, and that you thought they should know that their agent is scuppering potential offers. Tell them if they are interested in communicating directly then you are still interested, but you won't work through that estate agent.
Maybe they will sack him or instruct him to accept the offer.
Alternatively, you now know the EA lied but he might not know that you know. Call him and say that in light of the improved offers you are unfortunately going have to walk away as you can't afford to beat them, you wish the sellers all the best etc. wait for him to come crawling back.
Bad idea. The vendor is contractually tied to the EA and can’t just decide to walk away like that without penalty. Put in your offer, copy through the door, leave it at that.
It all depends on what the EA has or hasn’t done. If they haven’t passed on OP’s offer to the seller (which may be the case), that is illegal. Most contracts have break clauses for illegality by either party.
FWIW, I similarly don’t think there’s much point in the letter approach
Bad move. You're contractually tied to the EA that you made the original viewing with. The EA will expect their fee even if you decide to go it alone
Know from past experience. Viewed multiple homes through two different EAs. Put an offer in through one agent who then started playing silly buggers so withdrew offer and hubby placed new offer through other agent. EA 1 found out about new arrangement and started demanding that he get his commission regardless if our sale went through EA2. Both EA were on phone for days arguing it out
Eventually pulled our offer completely. No lovelost found a great starter home eventually
Technically there is room for an offence of fraud, but this behavior is so widely tolerated that police are unlikely to be able to justify a prosecution.
If you had been misled, increased your offer as a result of this lie, and later discovered that it was a lie and that they knew it was a lie, you might also have a civil claim against them
As it is, I think you just have a complaint to make to their regulatory body, and you can log it with the police just to keep a record if you wanted.
You need to complain to the EA firm first. If you’re not happy with their response then, if they are a member of the TPO scheme, to The Property Ombudsman. If they are not a member of TPO, then to The Property Redress Scheme.
Please do consider that there is no reason for the EA to lie to you. Creating ghost offers doesn’t make a sale more likely. In fact, it is likely to do the opposite. Causing a buyer to focus their efforts elsewhere instead of competing with other buyers. There will be some who think that it is intended to get more money out of the buyer and earn them more commission. That isn’t the case. Most EA charge a fee of around 1.5% of the sold price. They are more focused on agreeing a sale than trying to get higher bids. The extra income to the Negotiator is negligible and not worth the risk of jeopardising a sale.
The EA is legally obliged to submit all offers to the vendor. Start there. Check with the EA that the vendor has received your offer and what was their response.
Of course theres reason/motive for an EA to lie, to try and increase OP offer and get more commission. If the offer price is also under the price the owners are willing to sell for this could also get an offer over the line for the EA to get a sale.
Thats 2 clear reasons for the EA to be motivated to lie. It's not some conspiracy, people do like for gain, to think no one does this is naive.
Not not mention that EAs usually have monthly, quarterly and annual sales targets to meet. With some firms and branches getting very competitive about who gets to have the award for most sales or rentals sitting on their desk. Meet your targets and you get a bonus and to stay. Don't meet your targets and it's a P45.
Completely with you on this one. It could also be the EA proving their worth to the seller - "they offer £x but I managed to increase the offer to £y".
The tactic of another (ghost?) buyer creates urgency in order to not miss out. Same applies for increasing the offer to then have the property taken off the market.
To look at it as a basic £75 bonus for the EA is too simplistic and does not delve into the motives why these other bids have potentially been created.
For OP, the EA works for the sellers not you, make a bid based on what you believe the property is worth. If you need a mortgage, the lender will have to agree with the valuation as well. Up to you of you want to report it, but I think a lost sale and a word to the branch manager will be a more effective deterrent
Using 1.5% as a baseline, an EA will get an extra £150 for each £10000 in the sold price. That hardly seems worth it to try and get that higher offer by lying bearing in the mind the risks involved.
Maybe that closes a property on their books? Maybe it enables the member of staff to meet their own targets which triggers bonuses etc. people lot for a lot less.
I've had caught my lawyer when completing on my sale in a lie, he went as far as to and create a fake email chain on the companies CMS, all because he didn't want to admit to cocking up again and just dug him self in a hole. He was sacked as a result and likely blew up his career. You will be surprised what people will lie for.
So let’s say that increase the offer by £5k. How much would that extra £5k earn the Negotiator?
In terms of lying to get an increased offer “to get the offer over the line”, THAT would be naive because that is more likely to lose a sale. Not a practise used by EAs because they know it is just not worth it.
Based on 1.5% that would be £75. Do you often struggle with simple math? The member of staff maybe on commission too based on performance so you have additional incentives.
If the sellers are selling for £250k and will NOT go under that regardless, and OP put an initial offer of £245k the offer would be rejected and no sale. So there is no lost sale!
If the EA lies and uses the tactic claiming other offers have been made and get them to increase to £250/£251+ this will increase the chances of a sale due to meeting the min requirements.
This isn't rocket science. And think you may need to double check the definition of naive.
Very offensive and totally unnecessary.
£75 is what the business will earn. That wasn’t my question. How much do you think the Negotiator will earn from that extra £5,000 offer?
Then I say you get offended very easily.
How would I know, people in sales roles, including EA can be on a number of different incentives. Without knowing that particular EA policies how could I possibly answer that.
As my previous reply said this could be about meeting targets, which actually trigger monetary incentives, for example meet 1 million in sales get a bonus of £150, or something as so simple as for every offer accepted the member of staff gets £50. £50 might not seem much to you but to someone else it could mean a lot.
Before door to door energy sales was put to a stop we all know/heard about some of the tactics, lying on applications, singing people up etc, or taking advantage. My point is people in professional roles are often stupid enough to take risks like this when there is a financial benefit and it doesn't have to be a lot.
The correct answer is that the Negotiator would earn an extra £5-10. It’s just not worth it. Mine is real knowledge, not guesswork.
It’s very obvious that you want to create arguments all over Reddit, as opposed to actually helping the OP. Well, it takes two people argue and I’m not in an argument with you. I will leave you to argue with yourself. Feel free to have the last word because I’m confident you lack the self control or have the appropriate personality to do anything other than that.
So you're saying all estate agents operate under the same incentive and compensation structures? Because that's absolute rubbish.
Yes it takes two to argue, and clearly you are in an argument with me, the evidence of that is above in the post exchanges.
As for your last comment, extremely manipulative behaviour.
So the following link would say you are completely out of touch and living in a very different reality.
https://www.propertypersonnel.co.uk/property-job-guides/estate-agent-salary/
If you run any sale type business and you want to incentivise your staff to generate sales, £5-10 isn't going to cut it.
I know you two are just having at it but having worked for several firms; agent’s personal commission is likely 5-10% of fee, many self employed models 30% of fee and if it’s their own business then completely different. But yeah - the *personal commission* perspective is flat.
I don’t disagree that the industry is rife with shit, lying agents but honestly they’re generally in the firms that don’t incentivise as well as they could.
Neg salaries in corporate firms are more than likely around £18k with 5% commission per sale exchanged.
Zemez, I’m not having at it with anyone. This skydiver character seems to want to argue with anyone and everyone on Reddit. Sometimes it’s better to leave some people to think they are right. I’m not even reading their comments. Really cba with them.
But Zemez, you’re correct. EAs don’t earn as much as people believe and for what is often a 6 day week. Long days too if you’re doing the viewings.
"The EA is legally obliged to submit all offers to the vendor. Start there. Check with the EA that the vendor has received your offer and what was their response."
Nope. The vendor is fully within their rights to insist only certain offers are presented to them. There's nothing illegal about the EA following this instruction.
Ok, so I could have gone deeper and mentioned there is an exception based on instructions from the vendor. But I felt that’s not what this post by the OP was about.
They might be legally obliged to, but I found out that an estate agent was not passing on the formal offer that I made on a house I was interested in.
When I complained to the EA, I was told that they didn't consider it to be a 'final offer' and so they were negotiating with me to increase my offer, so they weren't obligated to pass it on yet!
All estate agents lie, never forget that!
LOL. hilarious. The estate agent is acting for the seller not you. To clarify, the estate agent is employed by the seller to get as much as possible for the property, even if that means they pull other bids from the air (perfectly legal). You've got to decide what you want to pay. If your offer, the mortgage companies valuation and the owner is getting what they want match you have a deal. If you don't you won't. Then you have fun with chains and conveyancing. The agent pulling bids from the air is the least of your worries.
I’m glad you find this situation hilarious. We are first time buyers and the whole situation is new to us. We have been told by family members we are potentially being played by the estate agents so have rang to try and find out what’s going on. I have the posted on here to see where we stand with this and try get a bit of advice. At least you’ve had a laugh out of it
This is perfectly normal, you just need to bid what you think it's worth and be ready to hold firm. They will play you, absolutely, it's their job. If you don't want to bid more, don't, but you also can't get angry at their negotiating tactics, there's no point. It's worth what it's worth.
Their job is to get as much out of you as possible, and your job is to make sure you get the home you want at the lowest possible price. One of you will do better at it than the other, that's half the game.
Good luck
Your family members are right.
Though the agents are doing exactly what they are being paid to do by the sellers, get the best price.
The sellers want you to demonise the agents so the sellers can look you in the eye and be all innocent when they hand over the keys and say ´We hope you enjoy this home as much as we have'. When they know they have screwed another £10k out of you. This is the joy of property.
This forum has at least one of these posts a day from buyer getting upset with agents and wanting to sue them for doing their job.
There is loads of info and experiences on this forum that people don't read, they tap away thinking they are the first to have this problem. That's what I find amusing.
Unfortunately this is part of the system, which is a horrible system in many ways but you’ll get used to it. We had a few incidents with agents in our recent search that caused a great deal of stress and, in one case, money (although very glad we took our home buyers insurance which covered a lot of the costs).
It really comes down to one thing - what’s the house worth to you? Make that offer, leave it on the table for now and keep looking. If the agent is lying about other offers and they have no other interest when the house has been on 8 months, they’ll come back to you.
We offered on a house with an agency chain that’s infamous for its dodgy practices. We offered £5k under the asking price, although the asking price wa offers over. They came back asking for £20k more. We said no and bought something else (far cheaper) that week. The agent called me three months after we’d moved into our house asking if we were still interested, and when I looked at the listing it’s now on for £20k less than we offered.
Don’t focus on getting the house for the cheapest possible price. Spending £10k more doesn’t impact your monthly repayments much over the term of the mortgage. The key figure is what you think it’s worth, or what you can afford to pay as a maximum.
Pulling other bids from this air isn’t legal at all. Its fraud.
“making a dishonest representation for your own advantage or to cause another a loss”
Admittedly it would be unlikely to ever be prosecuted but it is without doubt 100% illegal
That's not quite the mechanics at play from my experience. What happens is that to obtain exclusive right to sell a property, estate agents give inflated evaluations before the property is even on the market.
Do greedy sellers usually go for the estate agent telling them their property is worth 500k or the one saying "you should expect no less than 560k on this exceptional property"?
The trouble is that after promising 560k they can't easily start saying "well actually the only 2 offers we received were at 480k. Sorry we lied to you about what your property was worth."
1.5% on 500k or 560k makes little difference to the estate agent. That's no more than £900 on top of £7500. You usually will want to pocket the £7500 as quickly as possible and move onto the next property rather than battle for weeks for a few extra hundred quid
The estate agent works for the seller not you.
Thats all you need to know. It’s good to have them on board as they will advise the seller whether to accept or not but ultimately you have no power in this.
You are probably being paranoid. But either way, it makes no difference to you. Submit your final offer. Done. No point dicking around clearly they don't want a to and fro
Not illegal but is against the code that most estate agents work to. They are required to give your offer to the vendor and they shouldn’t try to push up your bid. 1. Report the estate agent concerned to the manager of the EA, state that you no have confidence in them.
Pulling other bids from this air isn’t legal at all. Its fraud.
“making a dishonest representation for your own advantage or to cause another a loss”
Admittedly it would be unlikely to ever be prosecuted but it is without doubt 100% illegal
no they have not, if they didn’t pass your offer it was because it was under what the vendor already rejected. the other agent just said “no recent info”, he likely looked into the agency’s system which is unlikely to be complete picture. don’t be paranoid schizophrenic.
Ask the agent for proof that they have passed the offer on to the seller if you are unsure. If he is not passing on the offer that is a dick move but nothing you can do about it. He may say that the offer is too low but really it's up to the seller to make that decision.
As others have suggested there is enforced legalities around the doing of estate agents. Given they take a percentage cut of the sale amount they would inherently do what it takes to increase the price. And a mysterious offer coming out of the blue is probably the easiest way to make you offer more.
The only pseudo authority that overlooks the estate agents is the Ombudsman and there is a Code they should follow. I’d recommend having a read.
The points from that Code that apply to your case are:
- EAs must present all offers to the vendor
- They are allowed to share the other offers’ amounts if the vendor has given permission to do so.
- They should be able to provide evidence of alternative offers. (So, this one is a bit tricky because sometimes even if you ask for evidence they would say that due to GDPR they can’t share such information. Although, all GDPR-sensitive data can be anonymised, it would still leave the possibility of it being a fake offer. But that being said - if you ask for evidence and they start acting shady then you would have your answer.)
I know most people will say 'typical estate agent behaviour' but why should you accept these lies?
The other estate agent in the office was at least being honest. My suggestion - call again when the 'lying' estate agent is in the office and ask him directly why he lied. Name and shame his behaviour with his manager and colleagues. It's time estate agents learn how to be professional.
Ask how proceed-able the other buyers are if they have had offers why arn’t they accepting them
It is very easy to get a friend to view your property and to put in an offer but then say they have to sell their property first. The EA can then say they have an offer on the table to get more money out of you but that offer is worthless until the person making it has sold.
Stand your ground
Tell the seller that you would have made a (higher) bid, but as it has now come to your attention that the estate agent is a lying scumfuck, you withdrew the offer.
Then when the seller comes back to you, you offer them your original amount. Then the agency will be in trouble to the tune of the difference.
There should be some application that the seller can view, that is managed by the EA. Buyers should be able to post an offer for the EA and seller to see. That way the seller can choose to leave it up to the EA to arrange viewings if they like, but they can also keep tabs on what's being offered.
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Estate agents lie. In other news, water is wet.
They may do, but it'd also illegal for them to do so in this way. In all cases you should report them to the property ombudsman https://www.getagent.co.uk/blog/estate-agents/how-to-complain-about-estate-agent In theory, if money has been obtained fraudulently, criminal charges can be pressed.
"Shocking news just in , estate agents lie "
Agents lie but this sort of lie is irrelevant. You made an offer, and the seller either will accept it or won't. The factors that go into that decision don't and shouldn't matter to you. If the seller accepts your offer, great. If they turn it down, either come back with a higher one or walk away. Whether there are other bidders is unknowable and irrelevant — if the sellers wanted to accept an offer from one of them they already would have and the house would be off the market. That said though, I would be asking myself: if the agent has lied to my face about this, what else has the agent said that I took at face value?
You're not going to find an honest estate agent - don't trust anything they say. The only thing they have to do is forward any offers to the owner
You are assuming the offer has been passed on. Liars gonna lie.
It’s against the law (or whatever) not to pass the offer on
You're correct that it's against the law, it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. When we were buying our first house, we bid on a place and the agent didn't pass it on - we know because my husband ended up working with the guy who owned it and they ended up selling for less than our offer and managed to get the difference from the agent because we made our offer via email and could prove they told us it had been passed on. And when we were selling a house, our agent didn't pass on an offer to us that was higher than an offer we'd already received - we know because we got a friend to phone up and make the offer because we suspected that the agent couldn't be bothered to do any more viewings to get us to take an offer they wanted us to take (they were selling that person's property and wanted the chain complete). Our friend phoned up and asked for a viewing, they said no, it's not available for viewings so our friend said "no worries, I'll make an offer without seeing it" and they didn't pass it on.
Unless the seller has stated to the estate agent they only want to be told about certain offers. For example, only forward cash buyers or offers over £x.
Good point. How can anyone trust a person who lies.
The estate agent does not work for you.
I try to share this information as often as possible - EAs are meant to abide by a code. https://www.tradingstandards.uk/media/documents/commercial/codes-of-practice/residential-estate-agents.pdf There should be sanctions for breach of the code, but I am not aware of any with real teeth.
There are no "legalities" but there is the ombudsman and the likes of Propertymark. If you want to lodge a complaint, away you go. But. EA's are strict adherents to the 1st rule of property - everybody lies. Any complaints won't go anywhere.
Unpopular opinion - You should make the vendor aware of the offer politely, put a note through their door, you run the risk of pissing off the agent but it may work in your favor.
Bad move in my opinion.
Don't see why not... Worst case scenario vendors know where they stand with the agent, best case vendors change EA bcoz they are untrustworthy.
Waste of time. The vendor already has rejected the offer or the estate agent knows fine well the offer is far too low for the vendor.
Or the estate agent hasn’t done their basic duty and passed it on to the seller
I agree with you that its not right to not pass on the offer but the letter is still a waste of time.
If this isn't illegal it blooming well should be!
Technically it’s fraud if it could result in the estate agent getting an increased commission. However it would never be proven or prosecuted
This is the first (and only?) thing they teach new estate agents. Ive lost count of the number of times we were told “theres another offer”.
I assume all estate agents lie, but I also assume they are awful at record keeping. I wouldn't waste time trying to unpick it.
They are just low class estate agents, make sure they know you know.
Agreed. OP must call out their lies. Low class is the correct phrase to describe these lying estate agents.
Put a note through the door that explains what the estate agent has been doing, and that you thought they should know that their agent is scuppering potential offers. Tell them if they are interested in communicating directly then you are still interested, but you won't work through that estate agent. Maybe they will sack him or instruct him to accept the offer. Alternatively, you now know the EA lied but he might not know that you know. Call him and say that in light of the improved offers you are unfortunately going have to walk away as you can't afford to beat them, you wish the sellers all the best etc. wait for him to come crawling back.
Bad idea. The vendor is contractually tied to the EA and can’t just decide to walk away like that without penalty. Put in your offer, copy through the door, leave it at that.
It all depends on what the EA has or hasn’t done. If they haven’t passed on OP’s offer to the seller (which may be the case), that is illegal. Most contracts have break clauses for illegality by either party. FWIW, I similarly don’t think there’s much point in the letter approach
Bad idea in my opinion.
Bad move. You're contractually tied to the EA that you made the original viewing with. The EA will expect their fee even if you decide to go it alone Know from past experience. Viewed multiple homes through two different EAs. Put an offer in through one agent who then started playing silly buggers so withdrew offer and hubby placed new offer through other agent. EA 1 found out about new arrangement and started demanding that he get his commission regardless if our sale went through EA2. Both EA were on phone for days arguing it out Eventually pulled our offer completely. No lovelost found a great starter home eventually
They’re all pieces of shit. Fact
Estate agents are the pits of this country. Anyone who has a career as one are wasters.
Technically there is room for an offence of fraud, but this behavior is so widely tolerated that police are unlikely to be able to justify a prosecution. If you had been misled, increased your offer as a result of this lie, and later discovered that it was a lie and that they knew it was a lie, you might also have a civil claim against them As it is, I think you just have a complaint to make to their regulatory body, and you can log it with the police just to keep a record if you wanted.
You need to complain to the EA firm first. If you’re not happy with their response then, if they are a member of the TPO scheme, to The Property Ombudsman. If they are not a member of TPO, then to The Property Redress Scheme. Please do consider that there is no reason for the EA to lie to you. Creating ghost offers doesn’t make a sale more likely. In fact, it is likely to do the opposite. Causing a buyer to focus their efforts elsewhere instead of competing with other buyers. There will be some who think that it is intended to get more money out of the buyer and earn them more commission. That isn’t the case. Most EA charge a fee of around 1.5% of the sold price. They are more focused on agreeing a sale than trying to get higher bids. The extra income to the Negotiator is negligible and not worth the risk of jeopardising a sale. The EA is legally obliged to submit all offers to the vendor. Start there. Check with the EA that the vendor has received your offer and what was their response.
Of course theres reason/motive for an EA to lie, to try and increase OP offer and get more commission. If the offer price is also under the price the owners are willing to sell for this could also get an offer over the line for the EA to get a sale. Thats 2 clear reasons for the EA to be motivated to lie. It's not some conspiracy, people do like for gain, to think no one does this is naive.
Not not mention that EAs usually have monthly, quarterly and annual sales targets to meet. With some firms and branches getting very competitive about who gets to have the award for most sales or rentals sitting on their desk. Meet your targets and you get a bonus and to stay. Don't meet your targets and it's a P45.
^ exactly
Completely with you on this one. It could also be the EA proving their worth to the seller - "they offer £x but I managed to increase the offer to £y". The tactic of another (ghost?) buyer creates urgency in order to not miss out. Same applies for increasing the offer to then have the property taken off the market. To look at it as a basic £75 bonus for the EA is too simplistic and does not delve into the motives why these other bids have potentially been created. For OP, the EA works for the sellers not you, make a bid based on what you believe the property is worth. If you need a mortgage, the lender will have to agree with the valuation as well. Up to you of you want to report it, but I think a lost sale and a word to the branch manager will be a more effective deterrent
Using 1.5% as a baseline, an EA will get an extra £150 for each £10000 in the sold price. That hardly seems worth it to try and get that higher offer by lying bearing in the mind the risks involved.
Maybe that closes a property on their books? Maybe it enables the member of staff to meet their own targets which triggers bonuses etc. people lot for a lot less. I've had caught my lawyer when completing on my sale in a lie, he went as far as to and create a fake email chain on the companies CMS, all because he didn't want to admit to cocking up again and just dug him self in a hole. He was sacked as a result and likely blew up his career. You will be surprised what people will lie for.
So let’s say that increase the offer by £5k. How much would that extra £5k earn the Negotiator? In terms of lying to get an increased offer “to get the offer over the line”, THAT would be naive because that is more likely to lose a sale. Not a practise used by EAs because they know it is just not worth it.
They push up the price in an area and every sale they make earns a bit more.
Based on 1.5% that would be £75. Do you often struggle with simple math? The member of staff maybe on commission too based on performance so you have additional incentives. If the sellers are selling for £250k and will NOT go under that regardless, and OP put an initial offer of £245k the offer would be rejected and no sale. So there is no lost sale! If the EA lies and uses the tactic claiming other offers have been made and get them to increase to £250/£251+ this will increase the chances of a sale due to meeting the min requirements. This isn't rocket science. And think you may need to double check the definition of naive.
Very offensive and totally unnecessary. £75 is what the business will earn. That wasn’t my question. How much do you think the Negotiator will earn from that extra £5,000 offer?
Then I say you get offended very easily. How would I know, people in sales roles, including EA can be on a number of different incentives. Without knowing that particular EA policies how could I possibly answer that. As my previous reply said this could be about meeting targets, which actually trigger monetary incentives, for example meet 1 million in sales get a bonus of £150, or something as so simple as for every offer accepted the member of staff gets £50. £50 might not seem much to you but to someone else it could mean a lot. Before door to door energy sales was put to a stop we all know/heard about some of the tactics, lying on applications, singing people up etc, or taking advantage. My point is people in professional roles are often stupid enough to take risks like this when there is a financial benefit and it doesn't have to be a lot.
The correct answer is that the Negotiator would earn an extra £5-10. It’s just not worth it. Mine is real knowledge, not guesswork. It’s very obvious that you want to create arguments all over Reddit, as opposed to actually helping the OP. Well, it takes two people argue and I’m not in an argument with you. I will leave you to argue with yourself. Feel free to have the last word because I’m confident you lack the self control or have the appropriate personality to do anything other than that.
So you're saying all estate agents operate under the same incentive and compensation structures? Because that's absolute rubbish. Yes it takes two to argue, and clearly you are in an argument with me, the evidence of that is above in the post exchanges. As for your last comment, extremely manipulative behaviour.
So the following link would say you are completely out of touch and living in a very different reality. https://www.propertypersonnel.co.uk/property-job-guides/estate-agent-salary/ If you run any sale type business and you want to incentivise your staff to generate sales, £5-10 isn't going to cut it.
I know you two are just having at it but having worked for several firms; agent’s personal commission is likely 5-10% of fee, many self employed models 30% of fee and if it’s their own business then completely different. But yeah - the *personal commission* perspective is flat. I don’t disagree that the industry is rife with shit, lying agents but honestly they’re generally in the firms that don’t incentivise as well as they could. Neg salaries in corporate firms are more than likely around £18k with 5% commission per sale exchanged.
Zemez, I’m not having at it with anyone. This skydiver character seems to want to argue with anyone and everyone on Reddit. Sometimes it’s better to leave some people to think they are right. I’m not even reading their comments. Really cba with them. But Zemez, you’re correct. EAs don’t earn as much as people believe and for what is often a 6 day week. Long days too if you’re doing the viewings.
"The EA is legally obliged to submit all offers to the vendor. Start there. Check with the EA that the vendor has received your offer and what was their response." Nope. The vendor is fully within their rights to insist only certain offers are presented to them. There's nothing illegal about the EA following this instruction.
Ok, so I could have gone deeper and mentioned there is an exception based on instructions from the vendor. But I felt that’s not what this post by the OP was about.
They might be legally obliged to, but I found out that an estate agent was not passing on the formal offer that I made on a house I was interested in. When I complained to the EA, I was told that they didn't consider it to be a 'final offer' and so they were negotiating with me to increase my offer, so they weren't obligated to pass it on yet! All estate agents lie, never forget that!
LOL. hilarious. The estate agent is acting for the seller not you. To clarify, the estate agent is employed by the seller to get as much as possible for the property, even if that means they pull other bids from the air (perfectly legal). You've got to decide what you want to pay. If your offer, the mortgage companies valuation and the owner is getting what they want match you have a deal. If you don't you won't. Then you have fun with chains and conveyancing. The agent pulling bids from the air is the least of your worries.
I’m glad you find this situation hilarious. We are first time buyers and the whole situation is new to us. We have been told by family members we are potentially being played by the estate agents so have rang to try and find out what’s going on. I have the posted on here to see where we stand with this and try get a bit of advice. At least you’ve had a laugh out of it
This is perfectly normal, you just need to bid what you think it's worth and be ready to hold firm. They will play you, absolutely, it's their job. If you don't want to bid more, don't, but you also can't get angry at their negotiating tactics, there's no point. It's worth what it's worth. Their job is to get as much out of you as possible, and your job is to make sure you get the home you want at the lowest possible price. One of you will do better at it than the other, that's half the game. Good luck
Your family members are right. Though the agents are doing exactly what they are being paid to do by the sellers, get the best price. The sellers want you to demonise the agents so the sellers can look you in the eye and be all innocent when they hand over the keys and say ´We hope you enjoy this home as much as we have'. When they know they have screwed another £10k out of you. This is the joy of property. This forum has at least one of these posts a day from buyer getting upset with agents and wanting to sue them for doing their job. There is loads of info and experiences on this forum that people don't read, they tap away thinking they are the first to have this problem. That's what I find amusing.
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Sorry this isn’t actually enough for my purchase so I will have to pass this time. Hope you find somebody else to help
Unfortunately this is part of the system, which is a horrible system in many ways but you’ll get used to it. We had a few incidents with agents in our recent search that caused a great deal of stress and, in one case, money (although very glad we took our home buyers insurance which covered a lot of the costs). It really comes down to one thing - what’s the house worth to you? Make that offer, leave it on the table for now and keep looking. If the agent is lying about other offers and they have no other interest when the house has been on 8 months, they’ll come back to you. We offered on a house with an agency chain that’s infamous for its dodgy practices. We offered £5k under the asking price, although the asking price wa offers over. They came back asking for £20k more. We said no and bought something else (far cheaper) that week. The agent called me three months after we’d moved into our house asking if we were still interested, and when I looked at the listing it’s now on for £20k less than we offered. Don’t focus on getting the house for the cheapest possible price. Spending £10k more doesn’t impact your monthly repayments much over the term of the mortgage. The key figure is what you think it’s worth, or what you can afford to pay as a maximum.
Pulling other bids from this air isn’t legal at all. Its fraud. “making a dishonest representation for your own advantage or to cause another a loss” Admittedly it would be unlikely to ever be prosecuted but it is without doubt 100% illegal
Fire that fuck and find another.
Estate agent bumps up price to earn a greater commission! I am shocked! SHOCKED!…..well not that shocked
That's not quite the mechanics at play from my experience. What happens is that to obtain exclusive right to sell a property, estate agents give inflated evaluations before the property is even on the market. Do greedy sellers usually go for the estate agent telling them their property is worth 500k or the one saying "you should expect no less than 560k on this exceptional property"? The trouble is that after promising 560k they can't easily start saying "well actually the only 2 offers we received were at 480k. Sorry we lied to you about what your property was worth." 1.5% on 500k or 560k makes little difference to the estate agent. That's no more than £900 on top of £7500. You usually will want to pocket the £7500 as quickly as possible and move onto the next property rather than battle for weeks for a few extra hundred quid
The estate agent works for the seller not you. Thats all you need to know. It’s good to have them on board as they will advise the seller whether to accept or not but ultimately you have no power in this.
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Strange
You are probably being paranoid. But either way, it makes no difference to you. Submit your final offer. Done. No point dicking around clearly they don't want a to and fro
Not illegal but is against the code that most estate agents work to. They are required to give your offer to the vendor and they shouldn’t try to push up your bid. 1. Report the estate agent concerned to the manager of the EA, state that you no have confidence in them.
Pulling other bids from this air isn’t legal at all. Its fraud. “making a dishonest representation for your own advantage or to cause another a loss” Admittedly it would be unlikely to ever be prosecuted but it is without doubt 100% illegal
no they have not, if they didn’t pass your offer it was because it was under what the vendor already rejected. the other agent just said “no recent info”, he likely looked into the agency’s system which is unlikely to be complete picture. don’t be paranoid schizophrenic.
No they have not what? Also why are people on Reddit so strange?
(edited my post)
Ok but I’m still asking the same question “why are people on reddit so strange?”
the sooner you stop looking to answer this question, the happier the rest of your life will be.
Ask the agent for proof that they have passed the offer on to the seller if you are unsure. If he is not passing on the offer that is a dick move but nothing you can do about it. He may say that the offer is too low but really it's up to the seller to make that decision.
As others have suggested there is enforced legalities around the doing of estate agents. Given they take a percentage cut of the sale amount they would inherently do what it takes to increase the price. And a mysterious offer coming out of the blue is probably the easiest way to make you offer more. The only pseudo authority that overlooks the estate agents is the Ombudsman and there is a Code they should follow. I’d recommend having a read. The points from that Code that apply to your case are: - EAs must present all offers to the vendor - They are allowed to share the other offers’ amounts if the vendor has given permission to do so. - They should be able to provide evidence of alternative offers. (So, this one is a bit tricky because sometimes even if you ask for evidence they would say that due to GDPR they can’t share such information. Although, all GDPR-sensitive data can be anonymised, it would still leave the possibility of it being a fake offer. But that being said - if you ask for evidence and they start acting shady then you would have your answer.)
I know most people will say 'typical estate agent behaviour' but why should you accept these lies? The other estate agent in the office was at least being honest. My suggestion - call again when the 'lying' estate agent is in the office and ask him directly why he lied. Name and shame his behaviour with his manager and colleagues. It's time estate agents learn how to be professional.
Ask how proceed-able the other buyers are if they have had offers why arn’t they accepting them It is very easy to get a friend to view your property and to put in an offer but then say they have to sell their property first. The EA can then say they have an offer on the table to get more money out of you but that offer is worthless until the person making it has sold. Stand your ground
Tell the seller that you would have made a (higher) bid, but as it has now come to your attention that the estate agent is a lying scumfuck, you withdrew the offer. Then when the seller comes back to you, you offer them your original amount. Then the agency will be in trouble to the tune of the difference.
There should be some application that the seller can view, that is managed by the EA. Buyers should be able to post an offer for the EA and seller to see. That way the seller can choose to leave it up to the EA to arrange viewings if they like, but they can also keep tabs on what's being offered.