Auctioneer won't phone me?!

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.