Buyers may be being misled by certain agents who may be living up to their unenviable reputation. Some certainly seem to be as slippery as freshly oiled eels and the big property portals aren’t helping as far as I can see.
Take this example (although there are loads more I could use). I was asked to look at this house advertised on Rightmove. If you look at the ‘Added on Rightmove’ date you might think that this house was put onto the market at the end of April. But you would be wrong. When I spoke to the agent I was told it had actually been on for over 100 days!
The brilliant Propcision tool says that in fact it’s been on and off the market more times than Ulrika Jonsson! If this listing history is correct then the marketing has been unlucky at best – indeed my impression was that there might be something wrong with the property, each time the problem was discovered by a potential purchaser the agreed sale falls through. For a sale to fall through once is unfortunate. To fall through three times stinks!
Of course there could be another reason. Each time a property is re-listed it is re-matched and alerts are sent to the millions of accounts that users have set up. This is a cunning way of getting a property back out in front of buyers. Of course this won’t be the case here but it does show why potential buyers need to be sceptical of listing dates given by agents and the history shown by the Portals.
Rightmove needs to get a grip of this & Zoopla seem to be no better at policing it but at least they are trying to help buyers unlike spineless OnTheMarket.com which doesn’t include a listing date preferring I suspect to instead cover up their member agents embarrassments.
‘Caveat emptor’ or buyer beware! Estate agents are engaged in what is being termed ‘portal juggling‘. It’s wrong, it needs to be stopped and those involved need to shown up for the con that it is.