Auctioneer won't phone me?!

Karlrove

Interested in a house...made offer....auctioneer wont return my calls to tell me the story...why? Very fkukin annoyin, wouldnt mind if she'd ring me and give me positive/negative,common courtest....bit annoyed. This common?

Eglinton

I emailed an auctioneer before Christmas enquiring about a viewing. Never heard a thing. I say feck 'em. If they can't be bothered, then I'll just wait till the prices go down further.

niceirishfella

I had trouble with an auctionerrr last year, I got the number of the vendor and informed them of their agents antics.

I caused mayhem...........maybe you should do the same?

spockety

You are not alone with this problem.

If it's any consolation (and I'm sure it's not), 2009 and 2010 will really put these guys to the sword, and the decent operators will be the only ones left once the carnage dissipates.

The_Conductor

niceirishfella wrote: »

I had trouble with an auctionerrr last year, I got the number of the vendor and informed them of their agents antics.

I caused mayhem...........maybe you should do the same?

Much as I hate to say it- this might be the only course of action that is guaranteed to any response.......

Jimbo

These things happen. Don't take it personal.
Just ring her and tell her you are disappointed you haven't heard anything and to give you the vendors contact details if they aren't interested in dealing with you.

No point in losing in the rag if you want to do business with them.

mrgaa1

Estate agents are generally useless - go to the developer or the owner of the house and sort it out from there. Write down everything - when you made the call, who you talked to and hand it over so that when the owner sells the house to you that they can show the estate agent why they are not getting their fee.

RIRI

niceirishfella wrote: »

I had trouble with an auctionerrr last year, I got the number of the vendor and informed them of their agents antics.

I caused mayhem...........maybe you should do the same?

We did this when buying our house last year - worked a treat. We just called by the house one evening & the vendor even mentioned she had been trying to get contact details for us due to the agents carry on!

Best of luck

bobbysands81

Karlrove wrote: »

Interested in a house...made offer....auctioneer wont return my calls to tell me the story...why? Very fkukin annoyin, wouldnt mind if she'd ring me and give me positive/negative,common courtest....bit annoyed. This common?

Post your offer through the door of the house that you made the offer on with your number on it.

See does the seller do anything about it.

niceirishfella

RIRI wrote: »

We did this when buying our house last year - worked a treat. We just called by the house one evening & the vendor even mentioned she had been trying to get contact details for us due to the agents carry on!

Best of luck

This is the way to go. Agents in my experience are useless, talentless muppets. They never really had to sell over the last number of years......just order taking and now when they really need to sell, they can't even return phone calls.:rolleyes:
Its an unregulated industry also with all sorts of muppets setting up to be an agent in the past. Some/most has gone to the wall, more to follow.
I had a guy selling a house for me - the agent i gave my house sale to was what i thought was professional, slick and attentive.
But then he sent a muppet in the office to handle viewings. He showed up late, reeking of cigerette smoke and deshevelled to my prospective clients. I was @ the house for this viewing. Before he commenced the viewing i took him round the back of the house for a word and tore strips outta him.
I then took the house sale of them.........

Agents = Useless.

jmayo

Karlrove wrote: »

Interested in a house...made offer....auctioneer wont return my calls to tell me the story...why? Very fkukin annoyin, wouldnt mind if she'd ring me and give me positive/negative,common courtest....bit annoyed. This common?

I often found women wouldn't phone me back
Can't remember if any were auctioneers, one was definetly a lawyer :mad:

Anyway back to topic...
Use the direct approach.
I can't see someone that is serious about selling turning down interest in this market. They may not like your offer but at least they need to find out about it.

Of course the seller may be a tyre kicker in which case they are holding out for the "upturn" and their house is "still" worth what it was 2 years ago :rolleyes:

3DataModem

Agent is probably holding on for a preferred buyer (i.e. one who is selling their house through the same agent).

Pop a letter in the door with the dates and times you called the agent, and your phone number. Let the mayhem ensue.

dirtydress

Same sort of thing happening with letting agents at the moment which is shocking the way things are these days. They just dont think they need to call you back even though their property has been on the market for ages! And God forbid you would request a rent reduction or the possibility of one, well you might as well be talking to the wall. There's still such arrogance out there still and people think they just don't need to try.

niceirishfella

I think it'd be good to name and shame all SH1TE estate agents - like ratemyestateagentinireland.com or something to that effect.

dny123456

Think we might be jumping to conclusions here.... we don't know what the house asking price was, what the price offered was... the manner in which the offer was made. It's possible that the auctioneer decided it wasn't a serious offer. I see a lot of people on here, saying offer 30% of asking. In reality, if you do this, the auctioneer will think you're just a messer. Considering the "Very fkukin annoyin" comment I also wonder about the OPs demeanor, could this be why the auctioneer mysteriously failed to show interest in an offer? In a historically slack market it would be surprising if they thought the offer was in any way credible, that they wouldn't follow up.

Lots of unknowns

niceirishfella

nope, regardless of the "unknowns", its common courtesy to call someone back - infact in a agents case, its their job.

dny123456

niceirishfella wrote: »

nope, regardless of the "unknowns", its common courtesy to call someone back - infact in a agents case, its their job.

So if the house had a price of 300,000 and the OP called to say I'll offer you 5 Euro, you think he should call them back?

niceirishfella

Now you're just being silly.
But, if someone did make a below par offer (and not one of your silly scenarios)they should through courtesy, call the person back and say that their offer is not a serious one and only serious ones will be entertained going forwards. It's all about courtesy and commonsense and professionalism.

ALFIET

There are three sides to every story but as someone trying to sell their house at the moment I would be furious if my agent did not respond to queries of interest, appointment requests or indeed an offer for sale.

I would also be furious if the agent didnt inform me of any updates

JuliusCaesar

Maybe the EA has been let go........

Dob74

Karlrove wrote: »

Interested in a house...made offer....auctioneer wont return my calls to tell me the story...why? Very fkukin annoyin, wouldnt mind if she'd ring me and give me positive/negative,common courtest....bit annoyed. This common?

Same thing is happening to me. Rang up about an apartments that I heard are going cheap. Have phoned about 10 times and gone into the office twice. Everytime they just brush me off and the usual the person dealing with that is out of the office, he'll call you back. Have a feeling the developer is in trouble and wont be able to finish the development. Or they have sold the first few for a high price and will only tell people, they know what the newer lower price is. Maybe they want the developer to go bankrupt so they can pick the apartment up cheap themselves? Cant understand it myself but there is definately something fishy going on.

ascottdub

Now DNY, thats abit unfair. The current realistic market is 30% on houses that were way overpriced to begin with due to EAs.
I may put an offer on a house that needs to be gutted, and the price hasn't changed since JUNE 08. It would be a serious offer to me, but it will be well below the asking price due to the severe change in market, and the work it needs. I can assure you that EAs can't be messing people around in times like this.
I would put an offer through the door now except the house is empty, but if I have to, believe me if I feel the EA isn't passing my offer on, I'll be knocking on the neighbours door looking for a contact. The seller has ever right to turn down my offer, but the EA is legally entitled to pass on any offers
I sent the EA a list of questions on this house, and not even an email to say, don't know some of these answers but I'll get back to you.
No time for them whatsoever. They will lie through their teeth, and have had it way too easy the last few years

jim o doom

niceirishfella wrote: »

Agents = Useless.

agreed - I bought a house in November, but by christ in the months before hand, when I sold my own house & was looking at other ones, the non stop ignorance, stupidity & downright moronic behaviour of most of the agents was insane. That being said the auctioneer for the house I bought was literally amazing, she was the nicest person & I met a few other fairly down to earth sound agents as well.. but the split was 85% douchebags 15% sound.

My sister was left waiting for 35/40 mins one day & had to ring the agent repeatedly before someone showed up to show her a place she was looking at, and boy am I tempted to name the agents in quesion. She lost the rag and gave out stink to the guy in question and he "banned" her from viewing properties under his "control". I have been so annoyed by this that I am in the process of typing up a complaint letter, outlining his constant behaviour & dropping it in to ANY house in the area he covers that has a "for sale" sign with his logo on it. Hopefully it will put the ignorant cnut out of business. hopefully.

DJDC

They could be doing you a favour. The knife still hasn't hit the ground and is gathering momentum. Just look at Irish banks today, things are starting to unravel on the green isle.

ascottdub

Please excuse my ignorance. The house I MAY bid on is vacant, or I would put a note through the door.

Where would I get the vendors number? Does the EA have to give it if I request it?

If I can't find it, I guess I will knock on the neighbours door and see if they know

Thanks

dny123456

I guess the reason people employ an estate agent is to handle the sale of their house. Do you think they will want you to contact them directly? If they wanted that, why wouldn't the have saved themselves the fee of the estate agents and used something like youbuyfromme.ie

jim o doom

dny123456 wrote: »

I guess the reason people employ an estate agent is to handle the sale of their house. Do you think they will want you to contact them directly? If they wanted that, why wouldn't the have saved themselves the fee of the estate agents and used something like youbuyfromme.ie

Of course that's the reason, but if the Estate Agent ISNT DOING THEIR JOB then the seller of course would probably like to know that as well, considering how bad the housing market is; and the seller wouldn't know if someone didn't tell them, now would they? and I can't see the estate agent giving them a ring and going "yeah I don't call back anyone who has made an offer". god almighty.

enfield

I could not get the estate agent to return calls or talk to me so I met the seller by accident and said that if he was not interested in selling he should have said so and I would look elsewhere. He said that the estate agent did not tell him he had any offers. So we sat down and worked a price suitable to both of us and he then said to the estate agent the house was no longer for sale and saved himself a bundle. I was happy that the bugger got his cumuppence. Common courtesy to return calls. Perhaps they think if they show indifference you will up your offer or show them you really really really want the house so they can then sew it into you. The thing is this happened in 2000 and not lately.
I am convinced the house prices are what they were because of the auctioneers and estate agents, f*uck them.
Tom.

dny123456

jim o doom wrote: »

god almighty.

Indeed... *backs away from the keyboard*. If I was selling my house, I'd love to hear from someone like you.

dny123456

enfield wrote: »

I could not get the estate agent to return calls or talk to me so I met the seller by accident and said that if he was not interested in selling he should have said so and I would look elsewhere. He said that the estate agent did not tell him he had any offers. So we sat down and worked a price suitable to both of us and he then said to the estate agent the house was no longer for sale and saved himself a bundle. I was happy that the bugger got his cumuppence. Common courtesy to return calls. Perhaps they think if they show indifference you will up your offer or show them you really really really want the house so they can then sew it into you. The thing is this happened in 2000 and not lately.
I am convinced the house prices are what they were because of the auctioneers and estate agents, f*uck them.
Tom.

You were lucky Tom. Did you pay him a deposit, or only transfer the monies when the keys were handed over?

ascottdub

Thanks Jim O Doom. That was exactly my point. If the EA won't return calls, how do you know the offer has been passed on? Sellers probably aren't been told either
How do I contact the seller directly besides hounding a neighbour?


Fair play to enfield post who bumped into the seller. Great to hear that it worked for you, although, you were lucky too. If I was a seller, I truly would love to hear from someone like yourself.

Any idea how low too go in Malahide?

Thanks

spockety

dny123456 wrote: »

Indeed... *backs away from the keyboard*. If I was selling my house, I'd love to hear from someone like you.

If I was selling my house in this market, I would love to hear from ANYONE.

dny123456

spockety wrote: »

If I was selling my house in this market, I would love to hear from ANYONE.

Then why would you pay 1% to an auctioneer?

spockety

dny123456 wrote: »

Then why would you pay 1% to an auctioneer?

Because maybe I'd like him to handle the advertising?
Because maybe I'd like him to handle the viewings?
Because maybe I'd like him to keep hold of deposits?

If I hired an Estate Agent, I would make sure they clearly understood that I wanted to be made aware of EVERY single piece of contact they had from anyone in relation to my property, no matter how insignificant they might deem it. I would tell them that they were not authorized to refuse any offers on my behalf, and that I would like to be consulted to consider every offer that comes in, no matter how low.

seamus

dny123456 wrote: »

Indeed... *backs away from the keyboard*. If I was selling my house, I'd love to hear from someone like you.

Yes, because the attitude of the person buying your house is really important. Just to ensure that you, as a seller, know that your house is going into the right hands.

I mean, really?

As spockety says, I'm pretty sure anyone selling their house at the moment would like nothing more than to hear from a serious buyer, even if their offer is low - it's somewhere to start.

We had a similar experience when we were looking. One particular "brand" of estate agents never answered the office phone and never called us back about properties we expressed interest in. Many of their listed properties had been sitting on the market for months, the sellers clearly unaware that their agent was making no attempt to sell it.

People hire estate agents because they're supposed to do agent-ey stuff full time, when the seller has other things to do. Like their day job. Failing to return a call to someone, especially an offer (no matter how low) is the very definition of "not doing their job".

MassDeb8r

Auctioneers/Estate Agents are mostly scumbuckets anyway, i think we all knew that so we are stating the bleeding obvious :pac:

dny123456

spockety wrote: »

Because maybe I'd like him to handle the advertising?
Because maybe I'd like him to handle the viewings?
Because maybe I'd like him to keep hold of deposits?

Absolutely right, in general to handle contacts with the great unwashed and vetting unrealistic bidders. The last thing you want is every Tom dick and harry contacting you how their unrealistically low bid had being ignored.

Which brings us to the most important reason we would pay 1% of a sale price to an auctioneer. To secure the highest price possible. That's their primary purpose. You have to trust that this is what they will do, otherwise there really is no point in engaging them. They're terribly expensive!

niceirishfella

dny123456 wrote: »

Which brings us to the most important reason we would pay 1% of a sale price to an auctioneer. To secure the highest price possible. That's their primary purpose. You have to trust that this is what they will do, otherwise there really is no point in engaging them. They're terribly expensive!

Many can't even do this. Shure, you don't have to be Einstein to be an estate agent. I know blokes and girls who are (or were) agents and they have the IQ of a 5 year old. They were order takers -no brainers.
Its an unregulated industry that anyone can enter without vetting,proper qualifications or even the ability to negotiate.

I repeat ;

Eatate Agents = Useless.

spockety

dny123456 wrote: »

Absolutely right, in general to handle contacts with the great unwashed and vetting unrealistic bidders. The last thing you want is every Tom dick and harry contacting you how their unrealistically low bid had being ignored.

Which brings us to the most important reason we would pay 1% of a sale price to an auctioneer. To secure the highest price possible. That's their primary purpose. You have to trust that this is what they will do, otherwise there really is no point in engaging them. They're terribly expensive!

The problem we face is that estate agents are no longer any good at knowing what the highest possible price for a property is, that is why the market is completely and utterly dead at the moment. If estate agents woke up tomorrow and got a healthy dose of coffee odour through their nostrils, they could kick the market into gear by making sellers get real about where the market is now for property. Not where it was 3 months ago, a year ago, or two years ago. Now.

THAT is why I would be instructing my estate agent to let me know every single piece of contact they get about my property, no matter how low the bid or how unrealistic the buyer. I personally think that from my own research, I am much better placed than they are to decide right now what my property is actually worth, and what it should be selling at.

rockbeer

Selling our house has been a learning experience. Gave the sale to an agent. They turned out to be useless so we tried another. They were useless too, so we decided to do it ourselves, dropped the price, had loads of enquiries and now have somebody seriously interested. I wonder now why exactly I went to the agents in the first place, apart from a misplaced trust in their professional ability to sell houses. A task at which they proved spectacularly inept. That mistake will probably end up costing me in the region of 100 grand.

In this market agents are a real problem, not just because they're useless and incapable of adapting to the new reality, but because they mistakenly believe it's in their commercial interests not to encourage price reductions. The ones we spoke to didn't seem to understand what 1.5% of nothing is. Many of them will go to the wall with their heads still in the sand.

ZYX

dny123456 wrote: »

Which brings us to the most important reason we would pay 1% of a sale price to an auctioneer. To secure the highest price possible.

I disagree here. This is what an auctioneer should do, but in fact their own priority is to sell the property at any cost. The auctioneer only gets paid when property is sold. All they really care about is the sale. If they sell a property for €300,000 they earn about €4500. Every €10,000 above or below that price only costs/earns them about €150. Don't blame them for properties not selling or bids not being accepted.

jim o doom

ZYX wrote: »

I disagree here. This is what an auctioneer should do, but in fact their own priority is to sell the property at any cost. The auctioneer only gets paid when property is sold. All they really care about is the sale. If they sell a property for €300,000 they earn about €4500. Every €10,000 above or below that price only costs/earns them about €150. Don't blame them for properties not selling or bids not being accepted.

Yeah you are correct in what you say; sale should be their only priority.. but it ISN'T. I just sold a house & the house only sold because of us breaking our backs, not because of the retard we used to advertise. We responded to an ad in a paper from someone looking for a certain type of house in a specific area, got a response got a sale.

The agent had gotten interest from ONE party, & she never even gave them a follow up call to find out what was going on. that's someone doing their job alright.

I also just bought a house; after many months of viewing shabby properties with unrealisically high prices. In some of those places the agent knew it was too high & was frustrated with a foolish owner who would not budge. That is not the agents fault at all & I did meet some nice agents in all the places we viewed;

However, in many of the places I had to continually make calls to get updates from the seller, even with having a highest offer on a place, and in many cases I would be asking "so what does the vendor think of my offer?" cue the agents response of "I haven't told the vendor yet, I will have an answer for you in "x" amount of time

this would be during a period where houses are shedding money like a sheepdog infront of a power hoover.. the longer a house waits the more money it loses. Every time I met with disinterest from the auctioneer in a property I was only partially interested in, the auctioneers actions caused me to remove my offer & move on to a more interesting property. I.e. another potential sale GONE in a time during which it is hard to sell.

well I eventually found my *perfect* house, the auctioneer was totally and utterly sound (it's in Dublin if anyone wants to know who they are just PM I ain't advertising for them ) and the vendors ended up meeting us and they were cool as well.. I must say though I am happy I'm out of the market it sure is bloody stressful.. now for the stress of getting married in 4 months wahey

ntlbell

ZYX wrote: »

I disagree here. This is what an auctioneer should do, but in fact their own priority is to sell the property at any cost. The auctioneer only gets paid when property is sold. All they really care about is the sale. If they sell a property for €300,000 they earn about €4500. Every €10,000 above or below that price only costs/earns them about €150. Don't blame them for properties not selling or bids not being accepted.

I have to agree it's not always in the best interest of an EA to get the highest price as has been said here the difference to actual EA himself and his monthly/yearly bonus on a 10k here or 10k there is so small it makes no sense for him to battle it out it takes up more time and that time could be put into another deal etc

I'm really surprised that they're not answering calls or returning messages etc it doesn't make any sense to me. if I was an EA I would be on to my clients all day long trying to get them to reduce the price and bring some reality to the situation not mention waiting in anticipation for any sort of contact from buyers I just don't get it.

jim o doom

dny123456 wrote: »

*stuff* - That's their primary purpose. You have to trust that this is what they will do, otherwise there really is no point in engaging them. They're terribly expensive!

You have to trust that this is what they will do? this is possibly the most singly niaeve post I have ever personally read.


So when you hire a builder, their job being to build; you pay them and just let them build and *trust* in them to do their job, because there is no such thing as a "cowboy" builder right?


Oh no I get it.. building is a DIFFERENT PROFESSION to estate agents.. & like.. estate agents could never possibly do anything that might endanger a sale, through stupidity right? because that industry is heavily regulated right?


wrong, you can get a cowboy or a moron in ANY profession, and you CHECK them to make sure they are doing their job - if they don't then you change to good one.

daheff

I've heard numerous stories of agents not passing on bids to clients because they werent high enough (and from one particular agent who deals in Enfield- I'd bet its the same one that was selling the house you bought ENFIELD)

Some EAs think they control their "patch" and dictate prices accordingly as to how they think they should be. Absolutely ridiculous.

In one instance a family member was selling their house...the estate agent kept telling about all the people that were lined up to see the house...but mysteriously never showed up to view. Lets just say a friend turned up to view it and made a low offer...the EA said that they never showed up to view the house at all!!

ambro25

For what it's worth, UK EAs don't seem to behave any better (we moved back in July'08).

I'm hearing a lot of similar going ons around here (Yorkshire), and I've had direct experience of very fishy going-ons with a major EA about a repo'd house last October, when we put in @ 15% below asking of £155k, with a £60k deposit in cold hard cash on the table.

Now, granted, £155k was already a very substantial discount on the perceived market value (same houses had been trading at 195-210 until about April 08). I though the offer was lowball, but not indecently so, particularly when factoring in the size of the deposit and reading the tea leaves about where the whole economico-financial caboodle was (and still is) heading.

I wasn't expecting the red carpet and feet massaging, but still... not far off that if-you-know-what-a-mean

Well, was I in for a surprise! Exactly the same shennanigans as posted earlier in the thread: no contacts by EA, we having to chase them repeatedly about our offer, etc, etc: an apparent total disinterest in a very solvent potential buyer in the higher property segment (locally) :eek:

Then I get a call on my mobile out of the blue (2 months after our offer), after I had given up and not chased them up for 2 or 3 weeks. Asking me if what we'd offered was 'our best', becuase a couple of first-time buyers had put an offer in (and of course, the EA would not tell me what their offer was, despite asking). Of course, I stuck with our offer and 'called their bluff'.

In the end, we were allegedly 'pipped to the post' by the couple of first-time buyers, who had supposedly offerred the asking. A 3rd party (with no vested interest) had in the meantime confirmed to us that first time buyers were never to be considered in the case of repo sales (some sort of guideline/rule in UK).

It is now near the end January and guess what? Noone is in the place and the FS sign is still there. Odd, since repo sales have a legally binding condition that the sale must be completed within 28 days from acceptance of offer (it's a short timeframe because the acceptance and price agreed on repo sales are published in the local press, and the selling bank/lender can legally entertain higher offers received during that period). Of course, I never found the publication about the alleged 'winning bid' in the local press. I might have missed it, mind (:rolleyes:).

Funnily enough, I never withdrew our offer (or revised it down since). Predictably enough, we have not been recontacted (odd, I thought banks/lenders were desperate for cash in this day and age). Not even about other properties on their books we may be interested in!

Donning the tinfoil hat a second, it certainly looks like EAs are still concertedly trying to artifically drag the market up, by withholding offers/relevant sales information from either party, until such time as they (not the seller) 'deem' the sale value acceptable.

I'm not one for grandstanding or 'told you so'-ing, but you can bet your sweet @sses I'll be standing outside the EA office the day they shut shop, laughing and pointing very merrily.