Q&A

Why do estate agents seem so bent these days?

I guess I am posting this as more of a rant than a question but here goes. We sold out property back in March after an extremely good cash offer meant it was too good to turn down. Unfortunately we have now been in rented a lot longer than we anticipated due to the fact that not many houses seem to come up in our area. You'd think that we were the perfect buyers, a hefty chunk of cash in the bank, a small mortgage offer already in place plus we can complete on any sale within 1 month. Except no matter how many times we contact every estate agent in the area, not ONCE have we ever received a phone call about any new properties on the market that suited our requirements. Every time we have had to chase things up. Over the last few weeks we have been to see a property that was a repossession. It was the perfect property and we decided to put in an offer that was rejected. Then we saw the public notice in the local paper with the accepted price and we decided to make a larger offer. When we rang the estate agent involved they were quite unfriendly in their response that we wanted to make a higher bid - it was as though they were being put out by us. Anyway over the next 24 hours they made us jump through hoops in order to lodge our offer in, which we did everything that they asked. Then out of the blue they rang us again a day later to say the company that owned the house had decided that everyone who were interested had to lodge their highest bid with the estate agent by 12 noon the next day. They would then be withdrawing the property from the market in order to proceed with the sale within 7 days. So me and the Wife discussed the issue all night and came up with the best figure we thought the property was worth to us and went down to the estate agents the next day around 11am to file our bid. They told us at the time that the other '3 interested parties' hadn't even shown up so far so things were looking good. We were told we would found out around tea time that same day if we had been successful or not. Anyway, we then received a phone call at 12:05 saying we had put in the second highest bid and therefore had not got the property. We asked what the highest bid actually was but they refused to tell us because of privacy issues, which was fair enough. We just thought we'd check it out in a few months on Zoopla or nethouseprices anyway. Imagine our surprise when that night during our daily routine check of rightmove that we saw yet another public notice on the property showing the offer at exactly £500 above the offer we made. So much for withdrawing it from sale! - the notice stated if anyone wants to make an offer to contact the office. *sigh*. So you can guess our disappointment, but to me it seems we were purposely duped by the estate agent into telling them our best offer and they have just added exactly £500 to it. That's if they ever actually ever passed our offer on to the repossession company. I rang them back and told them I couldn't believe that we had lost out by exactly £500 and the estate agent remained pretty speechless down the phone, the only thing she did say was there was nothing they could do now. You may think I'm being completely paranoid, but we have already lost out on a property before back in June because of the shady practises of an agent who blatantly lied to our faces about a house we were first to view. We were promised first crack at it but of course that ended up being sold to a developer - even though we rang every week/called into the office to ask what was going on with the house and were just told "we dont know at this moment in time" every single time. I guess I feel aggrieved that these agents seem to act as though they are untouchable and it seems they are, unless I know the right secret handshake to give them! I guess my question is then, are there any reliable agents out there who are true to their word??