From a buyers perspective:
The estate agent couldn't answer any questions at our viewing, they had very little knowledge of the area and details about the house. They are very happy to ring you 2 or 3 times a day to pressure you for information that is impossible to get any sooner, but when you want some information from them, you cannot get hold of them. Very slow with the memorandum of sale, leaving the house on the market for a painful amount of time after our offer had been accepted. No one seems to take accountability, you get passed from one person to the next, and they're quite happy to say "Sorry, I can't comment how she does things". Very stressful
Reply from agent
Dear Mr Ahern,
Firstly, I understand that you were recently involved in a sale in which our client unfortunately decided they could no longer move due to personal circumstances and they had to withdraw from the sale a month after accepting your offer. I can only imagine this situation left you feeling extremely disappointed.
The reason we had to regularly call you is that once your offer had been accepted in principle, it took some time for you to provide us with the all of the necessary information to enable us to place the property formally under offer.
Your offer was accepted in principle on the 26th January and it wasn’t until a week later (2nd of February) that you were able to provide us with your full breakdown of your funding and to complete our anti-money laundering checks. These forms are regularly returned to us within hours (at most within 48 hours) once a purchaser has had their offer accepted, so I hope you can understand our need for chasing given the unusually slow pace of information coming through. Yours was one of several offers submitted so If you were unable to commit, we needed to ensure we were able to promptly go back to one of the other parties.
It then took another two days for you to provide us with your full solicitor details thus again delaying the property being marked as under offer. We received this information on the Saturday 5th February and once being able to contact your solicitors when they opened on Monday 7th to confirm the instruction, the sales memorandums were then issued the same day.
Many sales fall through in the first week or two, as some agents will rush to place a property under offer without all the necessary documentation from the buyer in place. This puts their clients at massive risk of accepting on non qualified offer and potentially jeopardising the sale, we pride ourselves on providing our clients with a higher level of service, ensuring all offers are qualified before the property is placed under offer.
In regards to the query about your viewing, this took place on a Sunday, unfortunately one our regular viewings specialists was unavailable, however, to ensure we were able to accommodate your viewing (on a day when most agents are closed) a specialist from one of our other offices stepped in to cover the appointments. If you had any questions they couldn’t answer, you were always more than welcome to forward them to one of the office team. When we called for feedback first thing Monday morning, you had no questions regarding the property, you did in fact put forward your initial offer. We can only assume that you had enough information from the viewing to feel confident enough to submit an offer.
As to the concern that you were unable to get hold of us, our phone lines are answered 24/7 365 days a year. If one of the sales teams are unavailable to take your call then you would have been put through to the overflow team who will take note of your call, and any enquiry you may have, and request a member of our office staff call you back. As I’m sure you can appreciate, we are as small local business so it isn’t always possible that the same staff member will be able to answer your call, our negotiators may be on the phone or dealing with clients in the office, and our valuers may be out on appointments. However customer service & client satisfaction is hugely important to us, which is why we invest heavily to ensure we never miss a call.
Our clients are trusting us to sell their home, and we work with them to help achieve the best result possible, while putting them at as little risk as possible. I feel your feedback only highlights that we have done our job exercising all correct due diligence, rather than rushing to get the sold board up outside, only to have to take it down days later if something goes wrong.
I hope you have been able to put this unfortunate situation behind you and that you have since found another property to purchase.