Sunday, Jul 13, 2008
"Malicious rumours" blame EAs for crash
Sunday Express: BUYERS’ REVENGE ON ESTATE AGENTS
"DISGRUNTLED house buyers are trying to put estate agents out of business with a series of smear campaigns. Police believe the culprits are people who have been left with huge debts after buying a property just before the slump in prices"
Posted by alan @ 03:28 AM (1228 views) Add Comment
27 Comments
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1. symo said...
Don't forget as a member of this forum it is your duty to put in offers at 40% of the asking price. Just to add to the EA's woes.
2. quiet guy said...
What a sordid story. I'd guess that the threats and false information about liquidation are indeed from disgruntled house buyers but perhaps the police should keep an open mind about the possibility of an estate agent trying to push a rival out of business by underhand tactics as well.
If this is happening now, I don't like to think about what we might see in a year or two.
3. Dr Doom said...
I disagree entirley with Symo's statement. 40% is ridiculosly high. I never offer them more than 50% of their asking price.
Best thing to do id to set http://www.nethouseprices.com/ as your home page, and check the address of properties, and what their asking price was in 2001/2. Which is normally 60-70% less than the EA asking prices!
Thats the best thing to offer them! And a fair price. AND what they WILL return to!
YIPEEEEEEEEE
And I feel sorry for this guy. Most of the country thinks EA are bottom feeding leeches dont they?
4. bidin'matime said...
There is an interesting precedent here – look up Andrews v Hopkinson, in which a car buyer was able to sue the salesman who said ‘It’s a good little bus. I would stake my life on it.’. This was a contract case, but the purchaser’s contract was not with the car salesman (it was with the HP company), so it can’t be too much of a jump from that to claiming off an EA who claims ‘you can’t go wrong with bricks and mortar’ or ‘this area is bound to go up in value’ etc etc…
5. Ten Years To Get My Money Back said...
quiet guy said
"If this is happening now, I don't like to think about what we might see in a year or two."
In a couple of years everyone will have forgotten that there was ever money to be made from housing.
All the dinner party talk will be about will be about the profits to be made from bio fuel companies or wind power or whatever the the next fad is.
There will be no talk about house prices because they won't be changing and probably won't change for the next six years.
Buying a house will be like buying a car. Something you do for convenience and pleasure but certainly not for profit.
The buy to let brigage will probably be wishing they had bought a fleet of cars (Toyota Prius's ?) rather than their depreciated flats.
:- Duncan
Bought 1989 - £65500, Sold 1999 - £70500
6. hpwatcher said...
Don't forget as a member of this forum it is your duty to put in offers at 40% of the asking price. Just to add to the EA's woes.
Absolutely.
7. Dr Doom said...
Most of the time 40% is not enough to take off the asking price. I always check 2001 prices for any property I am looking at on rightmove, at: www.nethouseprices.com
Which is usually above 50% off.......Then i send the EA an email requesting the EA inform their vendors of my intentions. I think If we all did that, the market would come back down sooner rather than later.
8. martin said...
symo
Do you mean 40% of the asking price or 40% off the asking price? I only ask because out of devilment I put in an offer on a house last week at the Halifax for 40% below the asking price, the EA assistant went insisted on asking why so low but didn't seem to understant the percentage figures as actual cash. Eventually she called for the "valuer" of the house and when I had put the offer to her she almost spat her cup of tea all over her desk. If this is the reaction when I offer 40% off the asking price, I imagine she's gonna sh*t blue lights when my next offer is 40% OF the asking price.
9. Lord Pickled Onion said...
................and many of these 'disgruntled buyers' would be boasting about their shrewdness today, if the prices had continued rising. Their greed and inability to see what was clearly ahead was their downfall, not the EA. For the speculators I have little sympathy. For people who need a roof over their families heads, I wish them luck in the times to come. View your house as a home, not a cashpoint. As regards adding to EAs woes, there is no point. Many are looking at personal meltdown; some have duplicated the BTL lunacy and all face falling commissions and job insecurity in a rapidly declining sector. Not easy to 'add to' really...............
10. This comment has been removed as it was found to be in breach of our Blog Policies.
11. Martin said...
Peter Bolton King Said:
“I can sympathise with people if their home has gone down in value, but unless you are going to move that doesn’t actually affect you."
Really, even though intrest payments will have risen dramatically once their fixed terms come to an end.
12. Bigal said...
A month ago we put in an offer 40% below asking price; the estate agent was quite relaxed and dead pan about it. His bunch will survive the downturn because they were professional before it and will not be any less so during or afterwards.
There are going to be sooo many go to the wall, let alone those that built up chains of offfices on cheap credit. Frankly nature will take its course as it did in the late eighties and early nineties. Chasing revenge as described seems a bit unhinged.
13. martin said...
Peter Bolton King said:
“I can sympathise with people if their home has gone down in value, but unless you are going to move that doesn’t actually affect you."
Even when the interest payment jump dramatically when their fixed terms end potentially forcing distressed sales?
14. No-serf said...
Don't forget as a member of this forum it is your duty to put in offers at 55% of the asking price.
Just to add to the EA's .
Then start playing.
Indifference is you tool.
15. Dr Doom said...
40% is the minimum you should be taking off. In fact, you should be looking at sites like: www.nethouseprices.com,then offering 2001 prices, which are higher than a 40% reduction. Anyone who thinks they are worth more than this, is quite genuinly insane! Seriously. A house on my street priced at £68k in 2001 is now on the market for £189k.
40% of £189k is £75,600, which means even if they reduced it by 40%, the asking price is still over £113k.
There is no way that house is worth over £113k, when 5 years ago the asking price was £68k. Hold out people. Dont be tempted by 40% drops.
16. growler said...
@3 ABSOLUTELY RIGHT
If you have been missold a property as an investment that isn't, sue. If your brochure has a weakness in it, you might be able to apply Andrews v Hopkinson
I also think that this case could be used in part against a Mortgage Lender. "You told me this property against which you loaned was worth £x via the mortgage valuation."
Why not?
17. denzil said...
Peter Bolton King said:
“I can sympathise with people if their home has gone down in value, but unless you are going to move that doesn’t actually affect you."
Yes, and of course if they bought within the last twelve months they may well be paying for a mortgage that is considerably more than the value of their home, which must be terribly frustrating. Just imagine borrowing £300K on a place which is now worth only £270K. Ouch!
Anybody who is currently considering buying should forget it, get themselves a nice little rental place and sit back for at least the next two years.
18. cyril said...
I can understand people getting some revenge on EAs. Sending hate mail to Peter Bolton (the scum of the earth) is a bit of a waste of time though. His skin must be thicker than a rhino's to get to the top of that trade.
19. icarus said...
Which of the HPC bloggers is doing all this?
20. hpwatcher said...
I regularly offer 40% off the asking price i.e. asking price minus 40%...and they don't like it at all.
They just get annoyed.
21. martin said...
People should go out regularly and offer 40% below asking price indiscriminately even when they have no intention of buying, it might just get through to the sellers if enough offers are made.
22. letthemfall said...
It is easy to understand why EAs receive so much opprobrium, even though hate campaigns are pointless and offensive. EAs will always encourage buying in selling, regardless of arguments about value - or they go bust. In recent years EAs have benefited hugely from the transfers of wealth that have been a consequence of house prices rising way beyond fair value. They have creamed off their share, which is one reason why they are detested by so many. But as they have benefited by the inherently inequitable system, now they suffer.
23. jonb said...
Martin
If the asking price reflects pre-crash peak prices, then 40% *of* the asking price is probably too high. 35% (ie a 65% reduction) gets you back to the long term average, and prices will overshoot that on the way down. If they overshoot the long term average as much as they did last time, then they will fall to 25% of the pre-crash peak. Probably it will be worse this time.
Of course, these are average, inflation adjusted figures. The high inflation we are experiencing at the moment will reduce falls a bit. Anything involving the words "New build flat" or "Northern Ireland" will fall by more than the average, and consequently some other places will fall by less than the average.
24. mark wadsworth said...
This offering 40% below is a good plan. I haven't done it for several weeks, so time to phone the agents.
25. Maihem said...
@ growler
'I also think that this case could be used in part against a Mortgage Lender. "You told me this property against which you loaned was worth £x via the mortgage valuation."'
I don't think you could sue the EA *and* the mortgage lender for this. You can't claim that you had been convinced that the property was an investment if you also claim that you thought the lender's valuation was a permanent reflection of an everlasting value.
I doubt, given just five years history, you could convince a judge that you though house values didn't change over time. So the EA is going to be the only chance here.
26. p. doff said...
I can see the argument for offering 40% below the asking price if the asking price is opportunistic and way over the top. If the selling agent has done his job properly and got the asking price right, then the agent would imho justifiably regard you as a time waster if you submit a stupid offer.
This does, of course come back to the old question - how much is it actually worth? Or more to the point, how much could the vendor actually get for it from the one special buyer who really fancies it. The two figures are not necessarily the same, and the RICS 'Red book' definition of value need not be adopted when deciding on an asking price.
27. titaniccaptain said...
Im sitting smiling in the corner of this debate........