If you are a first time buyer in York or are moving home in York with your house on the property market, you may be aware of the bigger estate agents and builders that have an in-house mortgage advisor and conveyancing solicitors that they would want you to utilise.

Estate Agent Sales Tactics

Over the years as a mortgage broker in York, we have worked as a trust and strived to provide a personal, caring service for all our customers. To provide this type of service, we don’t work with banks, building societies or estate agents meaning we work solely for you as our customer.

When speaking to customers, we find that they are affected by increasing pressure from their estate agents to use their in-house financial services. Below are just some of the stories we have encountered:

Refusal To Put Forward an Offer

It’s known that many estate agents out there are known to refuse to put an offer forward if you decide to use a different mortgage advisor instead of their own. In some cases, they have refused to forward an offer to the vendor due to someone who has utilised their in-house mortgage advice service and has an offer they’d rather show favouritism towards, even if it’s lower.

Overpriced Service Costs

A reputation that we have heard about estate agents is how they quote ridiculously high when it comes to conveyancing fees. This is something many of our customers have experienced before. One significant case had the customer being charged £1,500 for a regular purchase with a particular estate agent.

The good news was our expert mortgage advisors helped with lowering this cost. From this, we recommend that the client approaches another conveyancer within the area and they were able to get this down to £750 which is half the quoted price.

Demanding Information & Being Pushy

When you have made an offer, you would expect to get a phone call confirming whether or not you’ve been accepted which seems logical. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. The estate agent will get in touch and demand to know which conveyancer you have used.

Furthermore, the estate agent will refuse to take the property off the market until you agree that you will use their own in-house service. As you probably have guessed, their quotation will be very overpriced and very unfair to the customers, however, they will put you on the spot and make you feel it’s your only choice to take. A Mortgage Broker in York can very much help you prepare for this. One question that you may be thinking at this point is…

They are highly illegal. As an individual, you have the freedom to use whichever companies you feel best suit you in the process. You choose which broker, conveyancing or another financial service you want to use.

If you haven’t explicitly signed a contract in the beginning that you will only use their services (which you won’t be offered anyway), there is no obligation to use their services for anything besides the process between yourself and the seller of the property.

Popular Estate Agent & Builder Sales Quotes Include:

  • “Keeping everything under one roof is easier with one point of contact”
  • “If you use our services it will give the vendor peace of mind that everything will go through smoothly”
  • “We will do all of the chasing of the solicitors for you and they’ll be more responsive to us due to the amount of work we send them”
  • “You need to come in and see our mortgage advisor for your offer to be qualified”
  • “Everything is likely to go through quicker if you use us”
  • “We’ll give you a free carpet/washing machine if you use our (extortionately priced) recommended conveyancing service”
  • “Your offer is more likely to be accepted if you use our mortgage advisor”
  • “We get better deals than most brokers”

Be Careful & Stand Your Ground

It’s good to keep in mind that when negotiating a purchase price think if the people selling the property you’re looking to buy need to know your financial situation and know the amount you’re able to borrow to pay for that property. This is something that they will use to their advantage when pushing their in-house service.

You need to be vigilant stand your ground and not fall under pressure. Your future dream home and financial situation lie in how well your mortgage process goes.

Here at Yorkmoneyman, our team always have your best interests at heart, keeping you updated in the process and helping you overcome any hurdles you may encounter to try and relieve any stress you may have.

If you are looking for support on your mortgage journey, please get in touch and our team will see how they can help in the hopes of achieving your mortgage goals.

Why use a Mortgage Broker | MoneymanTV

Date Last Edited: December 19, 2023