Here’s how large-volume corporate estate agency (with in-house financial services) serves itself, at the expense of its customers:
- List maximum number of properties, at any price and any fee, (because they’ll sell less than 1/3rd of them anyway).
- Large inventory = large buyer enquiry numbers. Sellers locked into long exclusive contracts can’t change agents for up to 6 months, remain stuck on the overpriced shelf.
- What do buyers need? Mortgages. Whoever they buy a home from. Buyer enquiries = mortgage sales even if they buy a property elsewhere.
- Defrauded Sellers unknowingly miss out on cash buyers (because there’s no mortgage commission, agents will deliberately not pass on cash offer details).
- Buyers who use agent’s in-house mortgage brokers become victims of the conflict of interest: broker illegally shares details of buyer finances, buyer gets manipulated into overpaying.
Sellers lose out.
Cash buyers lose out.
Mortgages buyers overpay.
Corporations cash in.
Good agents lose out. The ones who don’t overprice or lock seller in.
Rinse. Repeat. With. Every. New. Seller. And. Buyer.
It’s time to stop the sharks.
The PPI-selling, car loan-loading, thieving, fraudulent, parasitic financial service organisations who have normalised the ripoff culture.
Only we the home-moving customers have the power to stop this, by choosing our agents more carefully.