I wrote a post on this very subject a while ago, and things certainly haven't improved since then. In fact, I'm wondering if most agents are suffering from PBSD (Pre-Brexit Stress Disorder)?
Back in the 1980s and '90s, agents seemed to know their stuff. Before advertising a property for sale, they armed themselves with the full details, so that not only could they answer a question about how long the lease was, they could also tell you if the property had a combi boiler or not, and answer a query about who lived upstairs.
Not so now. On Wednesday morning, I rang three different agents about three different properties and asked the same question each time: how much is the service charge? Now, this is a basic piece of into that any agent should have at their fingertips. Lease length and service charge are the first questions buyers usually ask when hunting for a flat to buy.
Not one of the three was in the office. First off, I got a dippy-sounding girl who said, 'I dunno. I'm in Lettings. I'll pass your question on and get him to call you.' My call to the second agent elicited exactly the same response, except that this girl did at least sound as if her sleeping pills had worn off.
When I made my third phone call, all I got, after some excruciating music which sounded as if a rat was filing its claws on a xylophone, was an answering machine. I asked my question and hung up.
I waited for responses for the rest of the day. Not one deigned to ring me. On Friday, I did have a call from the third agent and I made an appointment to view next Tuesday. An hour later, I remembered a Very Important Question that I had forgotten to ask and I emailed the agent about it: is there a No Pets clause in the lease?
No response. This afternoon, I sent another email enquiry and said that if I hadn't heard from him by the end of Monday, he should cancel the viewing.
It takes me two hours each way to get from where I am currently living to N. London and I'm damned if I am giving up a day's freelance work only to find that cats aren't allowed. Last week, I was on the point of viewing a flat that had been on the market since October and had recently had £25k knocked off the price. It was a downstairs flat in a converted house and it had a huge, 120 ft garden.
I had just made the appointment to view and was chatting happily to the agent, when I happened to remark, 'My cat will really enjoy that garden.' There was a brief silence and then the agent told me, 'I'm afraid pets aren't allowed.' It was a share of freehold and it wasn't a purpose-built block with communal grounds, it was a conversion with the garden solely demised to that flat, so why weren't pets allowed? How could one quiet moggy interfere with the peaceful enjoyment of the upstairs owner's property? Or did they think it was going to lift its tail and spray the carpet in the communal hallway? If I could get my hands on that lease, I'd use it as a litter-try liner. No cats, indeed!
Really, when you're paying almost half a million for a 2-bed London flat, I think you should be allowed to keep a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, at the very least. Though I might draw the line at a crocodile.
Will I hear back from that agent before the Tuesday viewing? I bet I won't. You'd think the property market was awash with buyers at the moment, from the reluctance of agents to return phone calls and emails. Come on. I'm a rare cash (almost) buyer in this pre-Brexit slump. Pull your fingers out!
Saturday 13 April 2019
Friday 15 February 2019
Non-returnable deposits? It seems all's fair in love, war and property
I enquired about a flat in North London today. It was an online estate agency. I emailed an question about the lease length and a man rang me back.
"Did you know it's an online auction?" he said.
"No, I didn't," I replied, puzzled, as the property ad on Rightmove made it look like an ordinary sale.
"What do you mean, exactly?"
"We are accepting sealed bids and if yours is successful, you must pay a £3000 non-returnable deposit."
The last time I had been asked to put cash upfront was in 2001, when the property market was booming and would-be buyers were fighting each other off by making higher and higher bids. I refused to play ball, so I couldn't net a very nice house in my chosen area. Grrr.
I probed a bit. "What would happen if the survey showed up a defect and I wanted to pull out of the sale? Would I be able to get my three grand back?"
"If it showed something serious, then yes," said the man with the Mancunian accent, "but not otherwise."
So if it showed subsidence or dry rot, I could get my money back, but if it needed £4k spending on it for a new boiler or rewiring, or if I was hit by a bus and whisked off to Stoke Mandeville to be rebuilt, I would be £3k poorer.
I can see why a buyer would want to do this - especially if he or she had been let down before. I have had buyers pull out just as contracts were due to be signed. I have also (*winces*) done it myself.
When I was buying my very first property, I was just about to exchange on it when the love of my life (at the time) asked me to move in with him. With lovelight sparkling in my eyes, I airily rang the poor vendors, never putting myself in their shoes for a moment as I was so busy walking on air, and told them I was pulling out. I even told them the reason.
There was a loud gulp at the other end of the line, then a heroic, strangulated voice said, "I hope you will be very happy." I still feel guilty about that - especially as the relationship didn't work out as the boyfriend in question suddenly decided to have a sex change!
On the second occasion, everything had been chugging along with my purchase when I suddenly had a letter to say that a hysterectomy operation that had been postponed several times could take place the following week. I was so wiped out afterwards and in so much pain that I couldn't think straight. I felt much too weak to do the final pieces of paperwork and couldn't even contemplate packing up and moving, so I rang the agent and explained.
Next think I knew, the vendor was on the phone. "How dare you?" she said viciously. "I hope you get cancer and die." Yes, those were her actual words - and she was a doctor! I was shell-shocked. I could understand her being upset, but surely she could have sympathised, even a little bit? After all, when a buyer pulled out on me because her husband had had to go into hospital and was given a terminal diagnosis, I was incredibly sympathetic and even sent her flowers.
There is an expression, 'all's fair in love and war.' It should be, 'all's fair in love, war and property transactions.' I was once driven almost to a nervous breakdown when, in mid purchase, there was a communication breakdown between my solicitor and the vendor's. Mine tried for seven weeks to get answers from theirs, to no avail. Deciding - understandably, surely? - that the deal was off, I started looking at other properties.
Suddenly, I received an email from the estate agent that rivalled that doctor's remark in sheer, unmitigated viciousness. The agent accused me of being a cheat and a liar because I had 'gone behind her back and looked at other properties.'
I reeled as I read it. Not only was it slanderous, it was grossly unfair. I had only been protecting myself, trying to find a back-up in case this purchase didn't happen. Then she sent me another email telling me that if I didn't exchange the following Friday, the deal was off. This was after almost two months of not hearing anything. There was paperwork still to be completed, questions unanswered. Also, I told her, my solicitor was Jewish and didn't work on Fridays so exchange would have to be after the weekend.
A few days of silence followed, then I had another email repeating the message of the previous week: exchange on Friday or else! Not surprisingly, I said 'enough is enough' and pulled out.
On another occasion, I pulled out because my survey had revealed that softwood props had been used for the loft conversion instead of hardwood ones, and the roof was likely to cave in. Again, it was a female agent (I have since met some nice ones, thank goodness) and, just like the other one, she was incredibly nasty and said that the agency she worked would never deal with me again.
"But it wasn't my fault!" I protested. "The survey showed something serious!"
She wouldn't have it. But I had the last laugh. Three months later, I happened to walk down the street the flat was in and I saw that the house was encased in scaffolding and the roof was half-demolished. Ha-bloody-ha!
Will I be putting down a non-returnable deposit? No fecking way! And so my search continues. Does anyone have worse property luck than me? Surely the home of my dreams is out there somewhere...?
"Did you know it's an online auction?" he said.
"No, I didn't," I replied, puzzled, as the property ad on Rightmove made it look like an ordinary sale.
"What do you mean, exactly?"
"We are accepting sealed bids and if yours is successful, you must pay a £3000 non-returnable deposit."
The last time I had been asked to put cash upfront was in 2001, when the property market was booming and would-be buyers were fighting each other off by making higher and higher bids. I refused to play ball, so I couldn't net a very nice house in my chosen area. Grrr.
I probed a bit. "What would happen if the survey showed up a defect and I wanted to pull out of the sale? Would I be able to get my three grand back?"
"If it showed something serious, then yes," said the man with the Mancunian accent, "but not otherwise."
So if it showed subsidence or dry rot, I could get my money back, but if it needed £4k spending on it for a new boiler or rewiring, or if I was hit by a bus and whisked off to Stoke Mandeville to be rebuilt, I would be £3k poorer.
I can see why a buyer would want to do this - especially if he or she had been let down before. I have had buyers pull out just as contracts were due to be signed. I have also (*winces*) done it myself.
When I was buying my very first property, I was just about to exchange on it when the love of my life (at the time) asked me to move in with him. With lovelight sparkling in my eyes, I airily rang the poor vendors, never putting myself in their shoes for a moment as I was so busy walking on air, and told them I was pulling out. I even told them the reason.
There was a loud gulp at the other end of the line, then a heroic, strangulated voice said, "I hope you will be very happy." I still feel guilty about that - especially as the relationship didn't work out as the boyfriend in question suddenly decided to have a sex change!
On the second occasion, everything had been chugging along with my purchase when I suddenly had a letter to say that a hysterectomy operation that had been postponed several times could take place the following week. I was so wiped out afterwards and in so much pain that I couldn't think straight. I felt much too weak to do the final pieces of paperwork and couldn't even contemplate packing up and moving, so I rang the agent and explained.
Next think I knew, the vendor was on the phone. "How dare you?" she said viciously. "I hope you get cancer and die." Yes, those were her actual words - and she was a doctor! I was shell-shocked. I could understand her being upset, but surely she could have sympathised, even a little bit? After all, when a buyer pulled out on me because her husband had had to go into hospital and was given a terminal diagnosis, I was incredibly sympathetic and even sent her flowers.
There is an expression, 'all's fair in love and war.' It should be, 'all's fair in love, war and property transactions.' I was once driven almost to a nervous breakdown when, in mid purchase, there was a communication breakdown between my solicitor and the vendor's. Mine tried for seven weeks to get answers from theirs, to no avail. Deciding - understandably, surely? - that the deal was off, I started looking at other properties.
Suddenly, I received an email from the estate agent that rivalled that doctor's remark in sheer, unmitigated viciousness. The agent accused me of being a cheat and a liar because I had 'gone behind her back and looked at other properties.'
I reeled as I read it. Not only was it slanderous, it was grossly unfair. I had only been protecting myself, trying to find a back-up in case this purchase didn't happen. Then she sent me another email telling me that if I didn't exchange the following Friday, the deal was off. This was after almost two months of not hearing anything. There was paperwork still to be completed, questions unanswered. Also, I told her, my solicitor was Jewish and didn't work on Fridays so exchange would have to be after the weekend.
A few days of silence followed, then I had another email repeating the message of the previous week: exchange on Friday or else! Not surprisingly, I said 'enough is enough' and pulled out.
On another occasion, I pulled out because my survey had revealed that softwood props had been used for the loft conversion instead of hardwood ones, and the roof was likely to cave in. Again, it was a female agent (I have since met some nice ones, thank goodness) and, just like the other one, she was incredibly nasty and said that the agency she worked would never deal with me again.
"But it wasn't my fault!" I protested. "The survey showed something serious!"
She wouldn't have it. But I had the last laugh. Three months later, I happened to walk down the street the flat was in and I saw that the house was encased in scaffolding and the roof was half-demolished. Ha-bloody-ha!
Will I be putting down a non-returnable deposit? No fecking way! And so my search continues. Does anyone have worse property luck than me? Surely the home of my dreams is out there somewhere...?
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