Yesterday I read an article about Estate Agents trying to coerce/blackmail/mislead (depending on your take) buyers in to using their in house Mortgage Brokers and recommended solicitors.
It is not the first time I have come across this, there was a Channel 4 program on a while back (more info here) which confirmed it was happening then – so clearly a lot has improved since then!
We are all for an open market and customers to use whoever they like to help arrange their Mortgage, however we stand firmly against being Estate Agents using these tactics and will help to fight your corner every step of the way.
It is common for agents to use comments like:
“Our vendor would prefer someone who uses our Broker so we can keep everything in house”
“It will help to speed up the process”
or worse…
We have 2 offers on the table, if you use our broker we can probably sway this for you.
Most of the time (if not all) this is complete rubbish and worse – illegal!
So what can you do?
First of all, you have us! We will help fight your corner. Second of all you have a little piece of law on your side, The “Estate Agents Act 1979”.
In there it states,
Misleading statements
It is illegal to mislead buyers or sellers in any way.
Avoiding bias
You must not discriminate against potential buyers because they don’t want, or might refuse, to take services from you or a connected person, or someone from whom you or a connected person may receive financial benefits.
What does that mean in the real world?
We will speak to the agents and confirm we have done all of our checks and in our professional opinion you are as good as any other buyer to complete on the purchase.
If we do not trust the agents to forward on your offer without discrimination, we will write you a letter for you to put through the vendors door. In there we will explain that we believe THEIR agent, are playing games with offers in order to benefit themselves rather than the vendor and that we will be happy (with your agreement) to discuss this with the them.
Please remember that you are our customer and you are our priority but we (you, Mortgage Success and the vendor) all have the same goal – to get you a Mortgage in a timely fashion so you can purchase your new home.