Estate Agents wanting buyers to use the

estate agents own surveyors

Independent surveyors

Our highly qualified independent surveyors can offer you advice on your property problems and can carry out a building survey on your prospective purchase; whether it is residential or for business. We can prepare a schedule of condition and property report in relation to your lease. We carry out dilaps reports for landlords or tenants.

If you have a property problem we may even already have written an article on it and would refer you to our free articles page Click Here

Please free phone us on 0800 298 5424 for a friendly chat.

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Estate agents wanting buyer to use their own surveyors

Today we have had something happen which has happened quite a few times. This is where our client had booked us in to carry out an independent building survey and the estate agent had first of all been very awkward in giving us a time suitable for us to pick up the keys from them to survey the property.

Estate agent being more awkward than usual

By this we mean that the estate agents had not given us the name of the owner of the house for us to contact or as is usual they hadn't contacted the owner as they had advised us each time we rung that they had forgotten to call the owner because they were so busy (we do wonder how they can be too busy to allow a surveyor to survey a house to help a sale). In this particular case it got to the point where our client said they would pull out of the sale before the estate agent finally got their act together and managed to get access arranged for the survey to be carried out.

Interestingly the estate agent couldn't find the keys to give us access to the property but they did manage to ring up the purchaser of the property several times suggesting they use the estate agents surveyors

We were then advised by our client that the estate agent had managed to ring them several times saying why don't they use their recommended surveyor? who just happened to be part of the same company and certainly wasn't an independent building surveyor. It did seem strange that they could manage to ring the client on that matter but not manage to find the keys to give access for the survey, which had already been booked. Could it be because they were getting commission to sell their own surveyors?

 

Why have an independent building survey?

Always have an independent building survey as this will highlight any property problems. Caveat emptor means buyer beware and is why you need to have a building survey to find out if there are any problems within the property; the estate agent certainly will not advise you of any. We highly recommend you always make sure when you have a survey you meet your Surveyor at the property.

Remember the building Surveyor that you employ will be the only person working for you with your interests at heart.

Estate agents on commission, they are after all sales people

We have found that estate agents are on commission on almost anything they can sell; they are after all sales people. They are on commission of course for selling the property, don't for one minute think that they are talking to you as the buyer for any other reason. They are also on commission to sell mortgages and they are on commission to sell surveys and solicitors services so of course they recommend the companies that give them the best incentive unless of course their company is one of the many companies that not only own the estate agents but also own the surveyors and also own the solicitors and indeed are the mortgage company.

We don't incentivise or pay estate agents in any way whatsoever

We used to say we were never recommended by estate agents because we didn't pay them commission. However this isn't true because some estate agents do recommend us because they respect what we do and how we keep independent. We would add that we don't pay them any commission.

Why do estate agents want you to use their surveyors other than of course that they get commission from them?

There are other reasons why estate agents want you to use their surveyors. The main reasons we find are that they get the commission and the surveyors also do a survey that ensures the estate agents doesn't lose the sale and of course that they will get another survey so everyone's back is scratched so to speak with the exception of course of the person paying for the survey which is you.

Reasons estate agents give for using their recommended surveyor

They will say anything from that they are quick, they are an expert in whatever sort of property it is, to being the cheapest. At the end of the day it all comes down to them wanting to get their commission, nothing else.

Other advantages for the estate agent if you use their surveyor

Often they will get a copy of the survey sent directly to them by one means or another. This completely removes any negotiating power that you have.

We get fed up with estate agents

As surveyors, it has to be said that we do get absolutely fed up with estate agents, but we do have to work with them. They do so often make it very difficult for us to do a simple thing such as gain access to the property to carry out the survey. We come across many clients that have had bad experiences with estate agents. We feel that often this is due to a misunderstanding by the person buying the house thinking the estate agent is working for them and trying to help them find a house rather than them understanding the estate agent is simply trying to sell the houses they have on their books. With it, they will of course if at all possible sell a mortgage and again if at all possible sell the solicitors services and also the surveyor's services.

We spoke to a client who advised they had only just realised that the solicitor was part of the estate agent group as was the surveyor they were about to use and had at the last minute changed to an independent building survey, which they are now starting to appreciate the benefits of.

Meet the building surveyor at the property

We would recommend if you have the time available and can get to the property whilst the survey is being carried out that you meet your independent surveyor who will be more than happy to talk to you about any concerns and possible problems that you think the property may have together with any potential alterations and improvements that you may be looking to carry out to the property. We will, of course, be happy to speak to you about the survey report once it has been completed.

Compare our website and compare our surveys

Please feel free to have a look at our website to see for yourself the quality of our website, articles and our Building Survey reports. We pride ourselves on our professional standard and easy to read reports written in plain English, which we have been carrying out for many years on every age, type and style of property across the UK.

 

Other surveying articles that may be of interest to you:

 

The unhealthy alliance between local surveyors and estate agents

Do estate agents tell the truth or do they just want the house sale?

Why are our surveys better than the competition?

Why you have never seen any building surveys or structural surveys like ours?

What does a surveyor do on a structural survey?

Our Executive Summaries make things simple

Our Good, Bad & Ugly Surveys!

We would like to introduce to you what we call our Good, Bad and Ugly survey which is a building survey, sometimes known as a structural survey, and is a report that we have developed over many years, in fact several decades. We have listened to feedback from our clients and amended and altered our surveys to make them easy to read and describe issues clearly. The key factor we believe is that our surveys are easy to understand in plain English.

We can email you examples of our building surveys

If you are thinking of buying a property and are interested in having a Structural Survey carried out or if you are trying to sell a property and would like a Pre-Sales Survey please call us on free phone us for a friendly chat on 0800 298 5424. We would be happy to email you several examples of our tailor made reports.

Surveying articles

These articles are written to stimulate discussion. We hope you found the article of use and if you have any experiences that you feel should be added to this article that would benefit others, or you feel that some of the information that we have put is wrong then please do not hesitate to contact us (we are only human).

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