For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
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By AndyR
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1782162
avtur3 wrote:
AndyR wrote:
Flyin'Dutch' wrote:@AndyR Have you not added a mahoosive garage to your house to keep your 'essential tools'?


Just as neighbours from hell moved in :cry:

Morten, I’d agree but don’t have the cash fluidity to do that. If we move it will be upgrading. And I was a late starter.

I am seriously thinking about starting an estate agency on the side though :)


The chancellor has just announced that the stamp duty threshold is raised, with immediate effect, to £500,000 until end of March next year.


Yup, good news that. Will save a few ££
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By TheFarmer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1782173
They don’t need to be efficient.

They have two types of customers. Buyers and sellers. Neither can do what they want to do without them, so they just sit back and be Carp, and let everything take shape, eventually.

PS Andy, make sure you get a strip in the back garden with the new pad, for the Cub. 8)
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#1782179
avtur3 wrote:
The chancellor has just announced that the stamp duty threshold is raised, with immediate effect, to £500,000 until end of March next year.


. . . except for viewers in Scotland . .

That's the thing about the Barnett formula of course, some you win, some you lose, but the total is equitable.

Bill H
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By Flying_john
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1782183
Dont let that excite you landlords tho, as it only applies to your primary 1st residence !

But a nice kicker for the housing market, although will only financially benefit buyers and not sellers directly.
By riverrock
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1782225
On the house we eventually bought, we caught the estate agents in a lie as my wife accidently used her maiden name without thinking, so they started talking about how big the offers were that had already been made (and we knew we had made the only offer).
After experience buying we were very careful to sell using the best one we had tried to buy from, which worked well.
As a business it really doesn't seem hard to do well!
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By kanga
#1782307
Rob P wrote:Q: Why are estate agents so useless?

A: It's a qualification for the job, surely?

Rob P


slightly more seriously, it is significant to me at least that in England & Wales [sic] there is no 'qualification' for the job (nor, AIUI legal (dis)qualification) for use of the self-description. And, apparently, in 'good' and even 'normal' times little talent beyond superficial personability (and maybe a touch of mendacity :roll: ) is needed to survive and even thrive.

In US, by contrast, each State licences 'realtors' on the basis of at least exams (different in each, of course). As with basic lawyers, it is quite a popular 'part-time' job once someone has the State license, often by working on the books of a local franchise of a nationwide broker.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_estate_broker
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By Jim Jones
#1782314
RichJordan wrote:We're moving house next Thursday.

Had some estate agent dodgyness. We received an offer on the house. It was about 5% less than asking, so not bad, but we didn't immediately accept.

A few days later we got a note through the door from a new interested party saying that they were really interested in the house, but the agent wasn't letting them book a viewing as we already had an offer on the table. I sent a text to them and we set up a viewing between us.

At the end of the viewing they immediately offered us £15,000 over asking. We've exchanged and they're moving in on the 16th.

(And we're moving into an AirBNB for a month while our new house is built. But that's a different rant!)

I don't know quite what the agent was playing at. But if it wasn't for my buyer's tenacity, we'd be down quite a lot of money.



AIUI the estate agent is still entitled to his commission even though he was not part of the arrangement that sold the house., unless you had ended his contract with you Has he claimed it?

We had to rewrite the agent's blurb of our house as it was erroneous in its facts and full of spelling and grammar mistakes. House went on Rightmove on the Friday, offer made and accepted on the Monday. Money for old rope...
#1782340
Jim Jones wrote:
Miscellaneous wrote:
Jim Jones wrote:Money for old rope...

If you pay them the agreed fee then you are part of the problem. :D

I try not to break contracts...... :wink:

I wholeheartedly agree, honour what you have agreed to. :thumright:

The fact is the contract included them providing services, which you advise you had to rectify. They broke the contract when you had to rectify their work.

If people continue to pay for services not proficiently received then there is little incentive for estate agents to provide the service paid for. In fact, one could argue that in paying the full amount you encourage them to let 'clients' correct their error as a matter of course.

As I said in another thread; I had a similar experience and paid the invoice less £360 which I explained was a deduction for them failing in the contract provisions. As @Bill McCarthy said above, it is usual for the Highland solicitors to have an estate agency branch. Said letter outlining my reasoning went directly to a Partner in the legal firm. There was no argument, a revised invoice was raised and received overnight!
By avtur3
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1782344
Our 'in-laws' exchanged contracts last Friday for completion today, The transaction has taken nearly six months to complete, Poor performance by the vendor's solicitor has been the most significant problem, even to the point of frustrating the estate agent!

This has necessitated action by both the vendor himself and our 'in-laws' to track down documents required to complete the process. This activity was included in the scope of the solicitor's quotation and the solicitor has simply failed to complete the task (and failed to explain why they hadn't). The vendor has already made it clear that his solicitor will not be paid for the work they failed to carry out.

It has been a traumatic process for our in-laws (both 70), but the last 24 hours has at least seen them qualify for the chancellor's Stamp Duty concession, they benefit to the full amount of £15,000. Hopefully, they will view this as a bit of a silver lining.