List of pathetic selling techniques by estate agents

ewiz9

I have been looking at buying a used house in Dublin. Mainly seen houses sold through estate agents like Sherry Fitzgerald, DNG, and a few other major ones. So thought of making this thread to make the public aware of the cheap techniques used by estate agents to increase the prices. Please list down the techniques you have seen in this thread for public awareness. Also include suggestions on how to counter them.

List

1. Viewing arranged together with several other buyers and claim it to be an open viewing. I had several times, agents call and made an appointment, and when I reached the property, there were 20 others there at the same time. The SF/DNG/realtor agent tells me something on the lines, "It's a hot property, with many enquiries, we are expecting offers of 10-20% above the asking price". Altogether there may be 50 view requests for the house.. And squeezing all of them within 30 min window to turn up the hype. Also, if somebody is expecting 20% above the asking price, shouldn't that be the advertised price in the first place?
2. Turns the heater on, keeps it on at max temp for min 1 hour before the viewing, and during viewing lies to the viewers. "The house is very energy efficient, See even in this cold climate you feel warm inside the house". All triple glazed, blah blah insulated walls, SO you will spend very low $$ for electricity in this house. I have seen 2 Dxx agents/1 SF agent do exactly this. Told a bunch of us viewing the house, that inside it's warm because of good insulation. I went straight away and touched the radiator, and it was hot as hell. Turning up the heater and lying to viewers about housing insulation effectiveness.
3. This house was on the market three months before and was sold at (X+30% price). The sale fell through at the last minute because the buyer moved to another country due to an emergency. The seller will sell only if a comparable price to the last time is offered. X is the current advertised asking price. Ok, then maybe the dude should advertise X+30% in the first place. Instead of advertising X to lure the viewers (whose time has no value perhaps?) into the house and asking X+30%, during viewing.
4. Get an offer from one person, contact another person who is considering the property who offered a lower amount before about the new bid, and potentially trigger a bidding war among the desperate houseless public. One agent tried this on a friend. He increased his bid quite a bit in turns of 10K, until he figured that the other person bidding was an acquaintance. Both dropped the bid in the end.
5. Do a public auction on some websites like bidX/Auctionera and make fake bids internally to demonstrate the demand for the property.
6. ..
7. ..
8. ..
9. .. PLEASE post your experiences in this thread.

Suggestion

1. Check the property price register to see the sale price of properties near the house you are seeing. Don't approach this process emotionally and don't engage in bidding wars.

I am not denying the high demand and low supply of houses along with an impotent administration that is MIA except for tax collection is the main cause of this mess. In any case, watch out for tricks by estate agents.

ewiz9

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118928536#Comment_118928536

reserved for compiling a full list

tscul32

Whilst I don't agree that the fake bids in no. 5 should ever be made, aren't 1-4 just an agent doing their job?

No. 4 in particular, letting someone know they've been outbid is somehow a pathetic selling tactic?? Would your friend have rathered the house was just sold to the other bidder without being given the opportunity to increase their own bid?

I would argue that the buyer should be aware of such tactics, and not rush into things. Not that the agent is doing something immoral, except in case 5.

But some responsibility lays with the buyer to not be a gullible idiot.

Leg End Reject

No. 4 is perfectly normal and would be expected by the vendor, otherwise you are effectively ruling out underbidders and the vendor gets less for their house.

Brego888

Sold a property recently and if my agent didn't do number 4 I'd have been fuming. You live in a fantasy world OP

Btw in Ireland they're known as estate agents

LasersGoPewPew

There's a family estate agent (3 sisters) based in Dublin 14 that falsely overreports the sqm of most of their listings for sale on daft, myhome, and their website. Funny how they never underreport the correct sqm. They get away with it as there's no legislative governing body to be accountable to. They must think people are thick as muck. Regarding #4 OP, don't you understand this is a basic function of an estate agent?

DubCount

Its not the Estate Agent's fault that there is insufficient supply, prices are nuts, and every available property is a "hot property" with lots of other interested buyers.

Most estate agents I have come across are pretty straight. They are there to get the best price for the seller, but I've never come across any proof that any of them create false bids, hire a crowd for viewings etc. Its just an urban myth.

snowcat

I think you are overestimating the acumen of estate agents. They are fairly simple creatures really. Its not rocket science to sell a property in a hot market. Stick an ad on daft and do a few viewings. The bids come in. Accept the highest one and let the solicitor do the rest. In this country they are more or less all the same and there is little need or incentive for them to actually do much selling. I would personally never use them to sell such high value assets. Its much easier and more satisfying to do it yourself and save thousands also knowing you have achieved the best price.

1. Considering the demand out there, this makes sense. 4. If the EA didn’t do that, I’d sack them

5. Have you ever bid online? You have to register and pay a deposit in order to bid. What makes you sure the bidders are employed by the auction house?

When I employ an EA to sell a property, like every other seller I am looking for the top price someone is willing to pay, not for the EA to help you buy it for less. When I buy a property, I know the EA is not working for my benefit, he/she is working for the seller to get me to pay as much as I can. It’s a love/hate scenario, op some day you will be glad an EA got interested buyers to outbid each other and push up the price YOU get. But if you want to tell the EA not to encourage bids on the property you are selling, or, instruct the EA you will sell at the price advertised even if someone is willing to pay 30% more, I tip my hat to you sir, you are not much of a business man but you will make a buyer very very happy that they got a bargain.

olestoepoke

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118929656#Comment_118929656

Absolutely deluded, wasn't there a special with hidden cameras exposing them a few years ago. Most of them have the morals of a swamp rat.

John_Rambo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118929708#Comment_118929708

Really? I work with a few and they're fairly honest. What's the name of the exposure "special" you've seen?

JDigweed

The only gripe I have is the incorrect address trick. I see it quite a lot and I'm not sure if it's the estate agent or an honest mistake. Mainly in Dublin especially southside e.g Terenure when the house is clearly in Perrystown/Kimmage, recently saw one in Allenwood and they had it as Naas when it is clearly nowhere near Naas.

mikemac2

Number 4 is them doing their job

Sleeper12

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058241742/list-of-pathetic-selling-techniques-by-estate-agents

Some of your points are nonsensical and the rest are not tactics. The EA has a job to do. If he has a higher bid then his job is to inform you of it. Things like turning the heating on are to show the home at its best. If you went into a house that hasn't been heated for weeks then you might get the false impression that it's a cold damp home.

sheepondrugs

no fan of EAs but no.1 is common practice for donkeys years- its an open viewing not a new tactic.

They are not going to schedule 20+ appointments for the same house, especially if the house is lived in.

Buddy Bubs

When buyers start paying the estate agent, they will act on the buyers behalf and interests. Until then, they'll act on the instruction and interests of the people that hire them.

Baybay

As a seller, No.1 makes sense.

You clean everywhere, tidy away all the toys, cut grass, farm out the children / dog / resident nana & head out with the car eagerly awaiting feedback. There’s only so many Saturdays or hours in any day that this is a sustainable way to live.

JimmyVik

All your issues OP are easily solved.

Just bid what you think the house is worth to you and walk away if thats not enough to buy the house.

whippet

you'd swear the Estate Agent should be working in the interest of the buyer !! it's called Sales ... like with anything the seller wants to get the best price and the buyer wants to get it at the lowest price.

If you don't feel confident in how you can negotiate / bid on a property maybe get someone to do it for you - like your mammy or a solicitor or even a big brother.

It is usually the biggest purchase in someone's lifetime .... so choosing to spend quarter of a million because it felt warm when you walked in is just stupid. That is what surveys are for.

ted1

Take bids from people who you wouldn’t sell to as they are in a chain and not sake agreed. But use their bids to drive up others

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118951107#Comment_118951107

What’s your issue there? A bid was made, but not accepted because the bidder has to sell a property. The bid was considered, and may still be the highest bid not accepted.

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118951204#Comment_118951204

No, they accept the bid. With no intention of selling it to them. It’s only accepted to force a counter bid.

no issue if they don’t accept the bid

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118951269#Comment_118951269

Eh, sellers don’t intend to sell until they get the bid they want. When you bid 200k and for whatever reason the seller doesn’t accept, your bid of 200k is still the highest bid received but not accepted.

By the way, using “accepted” is kinda odd in relation to bidding, accepting a bid usually means going sale agreed. Perhaps “received” may make it simpler to understand the bidding process, the seller will tell bidders what the highest bid received to date is.

ted1

No, they accept the bid.

Bill is selling a house for 200k

Tom a cash buyer says , I’ll give you 200k

Mary says I’ll give you 205k. But need to sell my house.

Bill says to himself : I’m not selling to Mary as I don’t want to wait.

Bill says to Tom, Mary offered 205k, you need to go higher.

See what happens

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118951733#Comment_118951733

I think most people can, a bid of 205 was received but Bill will not sell to Mary, Bill tells Tom that bid of 205 was received and he will not sell, so Tom has to bid more if he wants the house. Ted, vendors often sell to cash buyers for less than the highest bid received, so it isn’t just about being the highest bidder.

ted1

It’s about accepting a big from a person solely to drive up the price for another person.

they need to reject the bid if they won’t sell it to a person. Rather than taking it just ti push up prices

tscul32

But the vendor may decide to sell to Mary in the end. Maybe Tom will drop out because he found a different house he preferred. The seller would be silly to just reject Mary until the house is sale agreed to Tom. There's also a chance that Mary could just say, I'll give you 20k extra if you let me have it. Then it might be worth it to the seller to take the chain buyer. Anyway, it's the seller who decides who they will/won't sell to, and whether to accept/reject a bid, not the EA.

MrMusician18

The wide angle lens is a long standing bugbear of mine.

Uninformed EE is another. Once went to a cottage up in the Dublin mountains. Huge site, great view and would have great potential as a family home if it could've been extended up and out. EE waxed lyrical about this. Thought it too good to be true, went home and looked it up and lo and behold the vista was protected. There was no way, no chance, PP would be granted for a two story extension.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118952224#Comment_118952224

I think you are either naive or looking through rose tinted glasses. The vendor doesn’t need to do anything except decide on who they want to sell to. The EA could just as easily tell Tom that he won’t sell below €205k as he did not go sell agreed at this price.

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118952624#Comment_118952624

im Going to stick with the tube of the thread.

taking a bid with no intention of selling it to the person and only using their bid to drive up prices is a “of pathetic selling techniques”

it’s not far off a phantom offer

BOHSBOHS

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118952896#Comment_118952896

Get a grip, sellers take bids and have no intention of selling until they get the offer they want, that in most cases is the highest bid but there may be a caveat that they want to sell to the bidder who is able to complete without delay. Hence why cash bidders are the most desirable and those who need to sell-to-buy, the least desirable. Doesn’t change the fact that the price someone is willing to pay is going up as bidders increase their bid. It only seems pathetic if you don’t understand that all bidders are not equal, and vendors don’t need to explain why they aren’t going sale agreed to every bidder.

PalLimerick

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118929685#Comment_118929685

The Estate Agent isn't your employee to sack though.

LunaLoo

We're in the process now. When we were bidding for the house we're buying there was a cash buyer bidding but they maxed out 5k less then us with a house to sell. The seller had the choice of accepting their bid for a quicker sale or ours for a longer sale for extra 5k and they went with us.

When it came to selling our house the agent was told we wanted quick sale so only offers from first time buyers or cash buyers. We had 8 bids to choose from and went with the one that would be the quickest for us so we wouldn't lose the house we are buying.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118953004#Comment_118953004

They are a service provider, if they are contracted to provide a service which is contingent on getting the highest price for my property, then if they don’t do that by informing interested parties of new bids and asking if they wish to increase their offer, I will terminate the contract/sack them as my EA for the sale.

I definitely experienced phantom bids in the past- ie I felt someone else was bidding against me with no intention of buying - I walked away eventually mainly because I had 2nd thoughts about the house- estate agent hounded me for days after hoping I’d reconsider 😂

The main thing I hate about estate agents is that many want you to nearly take the first offer made and close the sale- sorry mate but an extra 5 grand by keeping the offers open for another few weeks might seem like a waste of time to you but makes perfect sense to me.

Under pricing the house is probably the worst thing they can do though- from a sellers perspective it puts too much pressure on to commit to an offer over the asking price - I tend to have my own price in mind when selling below which I won’t budge- never goes down well with estate agents but I get there in the end- like I say many of them want an easy life whereas I’m willing to wait a few weeks more and squeeze a few more grand out of the deal

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118952982#Comment_118952982

I fully understand the process. doesn’t make it right.

Do you not think it’s morally wrong to take a bid from a person with the sole intention of driving up an already acceptable price for the already highest bidder who you will sell to.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118953358#Comment_118953358

Acceptable price? You’d be a bit stupid to sell for less than someone else is willing to pay unless there is a benefit for doing so like a quick cash sale.

So no, I don’t think sellers wanting the highest price they can for the biggest asset they are ever likely to sell, the proceeds of which in most cases are used to buy another home is morally wrong.

happyfriday74

Phantom bids are not a thing , Ireland is a small place, the industry highly regulated and if an agent is caught doing that their reputation is shot.

I have heard of people thinking they were dealing with phantom bids as they might have lost out to a property only to have the agent come back and say the property has fallen through with the party who outbid them and that they will entertain your previously rejected bid.

What's actually happened is exactly what the agent is telling them, the original party could complete and they are doing their job going back to the runners up. Sale agreed is not sold and sales break down for all sorts of reasons during a lengthy conveyancing process.

Icantthinkof1

Auctioneers are salespeople so of course they will use any tactic going to sell the property at the best price for those who’ve hired them

We had a viewing yesterday and the auctioneers told us when we rang to book a time to view it that we were lucky we rang when we did as all the viewing appointments were nearly gone as the property was in very high demand

Total spoofing as we rent the house across the road from the one up for sale and there was only 1 viewing before us and 2 other viewings after us

You can’t blame salespeople for trying to do their jobs and sell properties

Royale with Cheese

I bought an apartment off Sherry Fitzgerald in 2014 that they told me was 72m2 (this figure was on their full glossy brochure as well as their online ads), I had it valued by them 7 years later when I went to sell and they told me it was about 64m2.

I viewed a house a few years back that was claimed as a 4 bed, one of the bedrooms was absolutely tiny to the point that I wondered whether it would meet the legal requirements to be called a bedroom. I looked it up, it did not. Nothing will ever be done about this kind of false advertising though.

spaceHopper

We bought in 2012 during the crash we were looking in 2011 as well. 

My experience of EA's is they work for the seller, they only make money when they sell so it's not in their interest to be d1cks to buyers. 

It is in an EA's interest to talk up not down the market. They will never say it's cooling or quite the market is always hot. 

Then houses were mostly going under asking. SF has about 30 to 50k fat in the asking. 

At a viewing always expect other people to be there especially the first viewing, do you expect EA's to show 20 people the same house on their own knowing that most won't offer or buy it.  There aren't enough hours in the day to do that.

From your point of view. 

Check the area before you go. 

 Expect the heating to be on. If it's not ask yourself is it working. 

 Expect there to be other people viewing it. 

 Be nice to the EA so that they will remember you in a good way. 

Have your finance in place and be ready to offer proof on it. 

  Find out what you can about the seller, why are they selling. 

    Is it a probate sale (tax due)

    Are they buying else where, need to sell/buy first could take time

    Are they at war with difficult neighbours or problem teens....

 

When you make an offer, make it a good one but not to good. Expect a counter offer, when there is, ask about the other offer, have they checked they have mortgage approval, are they in a chain..... If you go up then don't do by 1k somebody else will alway find 2k more to better you offer, they might not find 10K os make it 5K more.  Be ready to walk way early if you think you won't get it. All you are doing is driving up the price for the eventual buyer and house prices in general for you and everybody else

ewiz9

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118955739#Comment_118955739

  Is it a probate sale (tax due)

   Are they at war with difficult neighbors or problem teens

Any suggestions on how to find this?

L1011

You outright ask if it's a probate sale, but a decoratively dated house with no stuff in it = probate in virtually every case. These will almost always get delayed by something. You'd find out for certain before signing contracts with "the estate of..." anyway even if it was trying to be hidden somehow

It's near impossible to find out how bad the neighbours are in advance and nobody will tell you

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118953358#Comment_118953358

You'd forgo potentially tens of thousands of euro on selling your house then, when you felt you'd received a bid that fell under the completely nebulous blanket of 'acceptable'? You would in your backside, you'd get every cent you could.

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118956176#Comment_118956176

you need to find out if the probate has gone through. Then see if you can find out how many people are involved. I’ve got good deals with probate in the past. They want a quick sale. And once you divide the sale between 5 people , an extra 10k, is only 2k each so they really don’t like to drag out the sale

misterreginald96

It isn't a pathetic technique or anything, just the times we are in I suppose, but I have found that it is so difficult to get second / third viewings of houses (of course I know in places like Dublin it is hard to even get a first viewing! So it's not that bad) but I've given a pair of jeans more consideration and time before buying than some of these 400k houses I've been seeing.

Not only that but when you do get a viewing it is a 5 minute slot (even after bidding) and they always say something like.. "oh work away there i'll leave you at it" then two minutes later I'll find ya man following me around the place - get away from me!

spaceHopper

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118956133#Comment_118956133

Ask the EA the reason for the sale, look at house does it look like a family with kids lives there or an old person. Open the fridge, is it on is it stocked. Look up and down the street. Drive by the house at different times, maybe this is only relevant after going sale agreed

Kurooi

-Sherry Fitzgerald, early 2021 - you need to bid to view the property. They then call back and urge to bid higher because only highest bidders will be allowed inside. Naturally this led to stupid inflation as people had to enter a bid war just to see the place, half if not more weren't serious about buying it. Add to that, I placed a bid (low) and they never asked for proof or mortgage approval. We were legit all meant to bid against any random shadow bids all you had to do was have an email address, create an account and hit bid on their site. Pandemic was used as an excuse but I'm going to say they made a lovely buck on that.

-Outside of pandemic, I was always put off by estate agents on viewing urging to COME IN STRONG and overbid or else they or buyer won't take you seriously. Like coming into a viewing of a house for 300k you're either going to bid 310k on the spot or you're a time waster and they won't deal with you. Insanely unprofessional and rude.