Dealing with estate agents

wishinonastar

my partner and i are trying to buy a house at the moment. We looked at our dream home last nov with an estate agent and got approved for a mortgage last wk. In Jan we asked estate agent for map of site where house is built and he said 'i ll get back to ye'. He never did, we contacted him last wk when we gt the mortgage. He didnt answer when we rang so we left a msg and ended up ringin him bk ourselves. That was fri and we asked to arrnage a viewing. he said ''i ll get bk to ye' Mon went by with nothin so we called him yesterday and he said the builder needs to sort out some things. he never mentioned showing it to us again. And said, guess what? i ll get bk to ye!

Is this normal behaviour? i would have thought in the recession hed be all over us. We told him we were looking at other houses too. Should we be more pushy?

Duckjob

Par for the course I'm afraid.

There's a lot of EAs only only ever sold property in the boom, and as a result possess absolutely no real sales or negotiation skills. Such EAs, now faced with a tougher market have absolutely no clue how to deal with it.

I think the tactic your experiencing is them "playing hard to get", in the hope of getting you to chase them so that they can reel you in. Probably best to ignore those particular EAs until they're ready to grow up and enter into adult business negotiations.

wishinonastar

thats a good point, thanks. I presume he has interest in selling it. I mean does it cost to advertise house online etc? does it cost the builder and the EA? Im paranoid that the builder doesnt want to sell it or something. it hasnt been touched in months, builder says hes not touching it till he can be sure its gonna be sold. As far as we re aware no one has looked at house bar us.

Duckjob

Who knows whats going on. Maybe the developer is with one of the banks with loans going to NAMA and is sitting tight hoping NAMA is somehow going to come to his rescue.

TBH the last thing I would do is start ringing up repeatedly about it.

Maybe make an offer directly to the developer and leave it at that. If you start chasing them, you're going to complete erode your bargaining power and you're going to get screwed on the price.

If the development is sitting unsold for months, it's a safe bet that the asking prices are pie in the sky, so if you do make an offer, go in nice and low.

wishinonastar

thats really good advice but do you find it weird that EA isnt pushing harder to sell in these economic times?The developer isnt with a company, hes a local builder so i dont think NAMA is involved.

DublinWriter

Business is on the floor with EA's right now.

The fact he's not taking your hand off to me would indicate a serious issue with the property.

wishinonastar

the guy living next door in identical house said when he moved in he had a sewage problem but it was sorted. When we looked at house in nov this wasnt mentioned but last wk after mortgage approval EA told us builder wants to go bk and see how to sort sewage problem. not sure why he didnt tell us this in Nov. is it coz we have a mortgage now i wonder?

Duckjob

wishinonastar wrote: »

the guy living next door in identical house said when he moved in he had a sewage problem but it was sorted. When we looked at house in nov this wasnt mentioned but last wk after mortgage approval EA told us builder wants to go bk and see how to sort sewage problem. not sure why he didnt tell us this in Nov. is it coz we have a mortgage now i wonder?

"COWBOYS TED !!!"

Seriously, that sort of thing doesn't inspire confidence at all. Sounds like the dev has problems but the developer doesnt want to incur any expense unless they've reeled in a sucker buyer.


As to why the EA isn't pushing harder, I firmly believe that a large proportion of EAs are slightly shell-shocked by the notion that their jobs might involve more than collecting deposits from lines of frenzied salivating buyers.

wishinonastar

but wouldnt the house have to pass an engineers report to be sold? if the sewage problem was a huge thing that coudlnt be fixed surely it wouldnt pass

Duckjob

wishinonastar wrote: »

but wouldnt the house have to pass an engineers report to be sold? if the sewage problem was a huge thing that coudlnt be fixed surely it wouldnt pass

I'm not sure but I'd imagine it would be a up to your surveyor to spot it to flag it to you before you signed on any dotted line.

I dont know whether it's likely to be a big problem or not, just surmising that the developer knows about it, but he doesn't want to spend cash fixing it if the development is just going to sit there unsold for God knows how long anyway.

If they think there's a prospect of a sale to you, they can justify fixing it on the basis that the costs will be covered by the profit from the sale.

It's all guesswork though TBH.

wishinonastar

yea well we ve heard from a friend of the builder and the EA that the builder isnt going to do more work on house untill hes certain of a sale. That makes sense i think.Would u think the house is still for sale? its still advertised etc

the_syco

wishinonastar wrote: »

yea well we ve heard from a friend of the builder and the EA that the builder isnt going to do more work on house untill hes certain of a sale.

How much more work needs to be done, and how cheaply do you think will the builder to it?

Bob Z

wishinonastar wrote: »

yea well we ve heard from a friend of the builder and the EA that the builder isnt going to do more work on house untill hes certain of a sale. That makes sense i think.Would u think the house is still for sale? its still advertised etc

Not sure if it foes make sense would you trust him to finish it?