Is anyone else outraged by how intrusive the estate agents are round here with your financial affairs?

The bit about having your offer "qualified" and then justified by some estate agent act of 19 something or other.

I find it a bit over the top and an invasion of privacy.

I'd be happy to flash a mortgage offer to say I was serious about offering on a property but when they ask for my bank statements and accounts for the last three years this is just unacceptable yet we are all doing it otherwise they dont pass your offers on.

Im particularly hacked off after listening to the owner of one of them spouting his mouth off in the Ranmoor Inn in public about some house he was selling and how much money the buyer had shown him - outrageous.

Also Saxton Mee just used it as an excuse to get me to talk to their financial salesman who then tried a hard sell on all sorts of financial rubbish I didnt want let alone need.
Why did I have to go to him and not just flash something through the negotiator - obvious really.

This does NOT happen in the rest of the country.
Sure you may have to produce your mortgage approval but not your bank statements or business accounts in graphic detail.

The estate agents act they quote does NOT require this much detail either.
Funny though (hilarious) how they quote this to get access to your finances when not all of them belong to the trade association.

I think its wrong.
How can we change it?

d

Yes..this is a difficult one.
I guess they do it because people say they have the ability tpo buy a house and then , when it comes to the contract signing stage, it becomes apparent that in fact they do not.A similar thing has happened to me.
A mortgage in principal offer is totally different to an actual mortgage offer.
Anyone can walk in to a branch of a lender,tell them what they earn and they do a quick calculation of the amount they will allow them to have.
The actual offer letter only comes when the survey has been completed and all the financial checks have been done.
A person who offered on our house in October had a mortgage in place( so to speak).
4 months later, he withdrew due to problems with his contract( presumably with his job?) He couldnt get the mortgage as he had only just started the job and presumably hadnt been in it for 6 months so the actual offer was declined.
If there had been a bit more investigation when he originally offered, all this hassle we have had would have been avoided so I guess the agents scrutiny sometimes can help to avoid this.
Just my opinion of course and I can see why you may find it annoying but there are so many sales that fall through because people imply they have the money when they do not( present company excluded!)

Originally posted by ukdavvy
Also Saxton Mee just used it as an excuse to get me to talk to their financial salesman who then tried a hard sell on all sorts of financial rubbish I didnt want let alone need.
Why did I have to go to him and not just flash something through the negotiator - obvious really.



They tried that with me - despite me telling them that I knew what they were up to, that I worked for a bank and that the staff mortgage/insurances I had arranged were cheaper than anything else on the market.

I also had another estate agent tell me I had to arrange my insurance through them :loopy: Asking for their FSA registration details and key facts document produced puzzled looks. Once I threatened to report them to the FSA they soon changed their tune :hihi:

Mini rant: As a bank, we have to jump through flaming hoops to sell insurance. We're frequantly mystery shopped by Trading Standards (rightly so) to make sure we're following regulations. Yet it seems that estate agents, shops and anyone else who feels like it can sell insurance willy-nilly, however they want, and not face any consiquences. :rant:

Edited to add: When you show the agent your mortgage offer and bank statments, you're showing them the maximum you can afford to pay. Only a fool would do that ;)

I'll just say No.

I'm getting sick to death of living in a culture that wants me classified to death before I can do anything.

If we all started saying 'No' a little more frequently then these assholes would have to justify more of what they wanted.

Some of the stunts that I've witnessed estate agents get up to when selling properties - like valuing low so they can sell the property to a friend of theirs 'in the trade' and then take a cut of the profit - makes me very angry.

Of course, at the moment they run the game, and like many such games, in places it's crooked. The irony is that these 'checks' have probably come about because the housing market, stoked up in part ny the estate agents, has go so overheated that people are willing to virtually bankrupt themselves to but a small brick box. SO the buyers lie as to their worth to even get their offer taken seriously.

Encourage people to sell their own properties rather than use an Estate Agent.

Joe :)

Try looking at this from the vendors point of view. Seven years ago we sold our house to a couple and we signed up and paid the deposit on a brand new house.

When crunch time came the couple who were buying our house didn't even have the money to pay the deposit on our house. Our solicitor advised us that we should pay the deposit on their behalf because if we didn't and the sale fell through our financial loss would have been greatly in excess of their deposit. This is a ridiculous situation and had the estate agent done a better job of sussing their finances out then chances are this wouldn't have happened.