Whether or not you are a First Time Buyer in Birmingham looking for your first home or a Home Mover with your house on the property market. It will likely have become known that some of the larger estate agents and builders would instead use their in-house mortgage advisor and conveyancing services.

Estate Agent Sales Tactics For Pushing You To Take Their Mortgage Advice

As a standalone Mortgage Broker in Birmingham, we don’t have ties to banks, building societies or estate agents. As such, we often find ourselves in contact with many customers who have been compelled by some estate agents to use their financial services. Please note that these situations are illegal. Examples of these stories include;

Refusal To Put Forward an Offer

Many estate agents have refused to put an offer forward because you choose to use an external Mortgage Broker in Birmingham instead of their in-house advisor. Other cases include favouring another lower offer over yours because you already have your mortgage sorted.

Overpriced Service Costs

Another common tactic is quoting immensely overpriced conveyancing fees. Unfortunately, we had one client who got quoted more than £1,500 for a simple purchase with an estate agent.

With the help of one of our dedicated mortgage advisors, we got this cost down. Following this, we recommended that the client use another conveyancer in the nearby area and get this down to £750. That’s precisely half of the quoted price from the estate agent.

Demanding Information & Being Pushy

You’ve made an offer and are now waiting to see if it will get accepted. You might expect a phone call detailing whether or not this is the case, that seems pretty logical. However, the estate agent will call up and demand to know whom you used for conveyancing in some cases.

What follows is the estate agent refusing to take the property off the market, unless you proceed with their in-house service. Generally, their quotations will be extortionately overpriced and completely unfair. However, they will put you on the spot and make you feel like you have no choice, a Mortgage Broker in Birmingham like ourselves can help you prepare.

  • “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.”
  • “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.”
  • “We will do all of the chasings 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.”
  • “Your offer is more likely to be accepted if you use our mortgage advisor.”
  • “We get better deals than most brokers.”

When Negotiating a Purchase Price

Is it really within your best interests for the person selling the property you’re looking to buy, to know your financial situation and potentially know how much you’re able to borrow? Something which they can then use against you to convince you to use their services?

End of the day It’s your mortgage, your offer, your potential future home. Getting in touch with a trusted Mortgage Advisor in Birmingham will put you in the best possible place to be prepared for these tactics beforehand.

When it comes to making an offer on a property, it’s good to consider the best factors and ask the right questions, our article on ‘how to make an offer on a property?’ is a brilliant resource to help you with this.

Why use a Mortgage Broker | MoneymanTV

Date Last Edited: December 6, 2023