Saturday 14 July 2018

I hate Estate Agents


As you may remember, lovely Green-Eyes studied hard and became a paediatric nurse at a teaching hospital in London. She is still there, performing a vital job and earning very little, despite the 'London subsidy', or whatever they call the extra few quid that is supposed to deflect the enormous cost of living there.

She has been renting a very nice flat miles out of the centre, for which she and her flatmate pay a large proportion of their meagre wages to maintain. The tenancy agreement is coming to an end, and they have been searching for another place to live which is not a hovel.

Estate agents rule London as they rule Bath. Whilst it is still legal to do so (it won't be soon, but this does not help Green-Eyes), they extract every penny from tenants that they can, whether they are moving in or moving out. I say 'pennies', but really it is pounds. Lots of pounds.

Written in the small-print of her tenancy agreement, there is a little clause saying that to walk into a branch of the agents and hand back the keys of her flat, she will be charged £300. Remember, this is just to hand over the keys. This is one of many charges which brings the total cost of leaving one flat and moving to another to £4000. This does not even include rent.

Estate Agents, along with bailiffs, employ a good number of criminally-minded people who use what would be politely described as sharp practice. That is being far too polite, and soon many of these practices will be outlawed - as I say - too late for many hundreds of tenants.

Some years ago, I bought a small, dilapidated house in a town not too far from here, for not much money. The idea was to renovate it and sell it on for a good profit. This was my one venture into the world of property development.

The banks would not  lend me the money, so I reluctantly decided to sell it as was, for a modest profit. I called a local estate agent and put it on his books, then sat back and waited for the many enquiries I knew would flood in.

A month later I had received not one call from the agent, so I called him. He said that nobody had shown any interest in it at all. I suspected something fishy was going on, so I decided to pay a call to the agent's office in person. He had never met me, so did not know what I looked like.

I went up to the desk and said to the receptionist, "I am looking for a house in this area. I don't care what condition it is in so long as it falls within this budget. What have you got?"

She said, "I'm afraid we don't have anything like that on our books at present."

"Yes you fucking have! You have my house which I am trying to sell with you!" was my incensed response.

The crook was deliberately sitting on it waiting for me to lose all hope of it ever selling, whereupon he would get an accomplice to buy it for peanuts and they would both make a little killing.

I put it with a different agent and it sold in a couple of days for exactly what I asked.

I never forget it when a dog bites me, and I can hold a grudge for ever.

P.S. I forgot to mention that the rogue agent sent me a bill for a few hundred pounds for carrying out a very basic survey involving nothing but hand-drawn floor plans. Do you think I paid it? Do you think he took me to court for not paying it? I wish he had.


21 comments:

  1. Yes this is something I have experienced too. I know of one local estate agent who does this very thing and has done for years. As for landlords and agents, green eyes needs to find a lovely private landlady like me. But in being kind and not greedy I am almost falling foul of the current laws on renting.

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    1. I think that in London she would have to be miraculously lucky to find a landlady like you. When even one bedroom flats sell for millions, people either want a good return on their investment, or they are as greedy as the agents, who no longer get involved in any maintenance on houses they control, for fear of spending their own money.

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    2. Do you rent to people with 4 dogs and a cat rachel?

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  2. We have different regulations here, but still manage to have unethical estate agents. Homes are going over asking in bidding wars and this practice has moved to the rental market. Not my fav people.

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    1. I think it is happening world-wide. Guaranteed money-makers are always things that people cannot do without - in this case somewhere to live.

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  3. The person who rents my Brighton house was conned out her own house by a combination of Estate Agent and Solicitor. She lost a fortune, and could do nothing!

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    1. I knew a solicitor like that once. He was in control of a flat my friend was renting and I wanted to take it on. He said that the landlord did not want me as a tenant. Later I found out that he was the landlord. Very devious.

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    2. He died of a heart attack shortly after, so all's well that ends well.

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  4. There are always a few rotten apples in every barrel Tom and sadly they get the whole profession a bad name.

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    1. In my experience, most estate agencies are barrels full to the brim with rotten apples.

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  5. I don't know how real estate is handled here, but can relate this story to what are called "pay day lenders" here. Short loans to poor and desperate people here, at usurious rates. For the last ten years this state has enacted law after law limiting them, and in the end the lenders find even meaner ways to lend money.

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    1. Same here. This was one of the main instigators of the global financial crisis. We have always used the American financial model. Special fucking relationship and all that.

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  6. I can’t bear them ( another reason not to move ! ) It’s all about how much they can make out of you ..... they are also pretty ignorant about period houses .... we had a 17th century cottage and, when we put it up for sale, they said it was ‘ cottage style ‘ in the details !!! Most of them haven’t got s clue unless it’s a house on an estate where they know how much they go for..... and, if you don’t have a kitchen the size of a ballroom and 20 en suites, they aren’t interested !!!!
    Hope green eyes and friend find a nice, reasonable place to rent in a decent area although I don’t like her chances I’m afraid. XXXX

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    1. She has a new place now, thanks. I have heard idiot agents describe the Royal Crescent as 'Romanesque'.

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    2. That just about sums them up !!!!! XXXX

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    3. Oh and happy for green eyes ....... so nice to live in London when young ! XXXX

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    4. All you need to negotiate the sale of very expensive houses is a de-mob suit and a kipper tie! Just the same as the kids who work in banks over here!

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  7. By and large they are a pretty dodgy bunch. We had some ridiculous quotes when selling our last house. We sold it ourselves in the end and avoided losing a great deal of money.

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  8. We had a hell of a time dealing with duplicitous estate agents in London. Finally, the landlord of the house we were interested in contacted us (don't know how he obtained our digits) & we each found out that the estate agent was telling the other party absolute hogwash about the other party's wants and needs. It was weird. We then decided to cut out the agent entirely & went ahead with renting the property, mostly sans headache.

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    1. They used to 'manage' rented property, but they don't eve do that now.

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