Foxtons London Bridge just managed a sale of our apartment. They worked together with Alexander Hall (their in house mortgage adviser that was arranging a mortgage release + a new mortgage for the buyers). We firmly believe the company was protecting interests of the buyers (who worked with their mortgage adviser) in this case rather than the seller/ours. We have done >10 transactions in London in the past and understand the buying & selling process fairly well.
Long story short the whole sale was managed to a completion date that precisely suited the buyers (to the specific date) whilst leaving us hanging throughout the process that saw a delay of 1.5 months for no good reason (explanation: "a document that Santander normally sends in two days is now taking ~3 weeks to deliver").
Foxtons refused repeatedly to re-market the property despite our repeated requests throughout the process - which ultimately gives greater power to the buyer as the Spring window for selling is closing and you are just left wondering whether the buyer will proceed or not.
All in all, we felt cheated in the process after paying a ridiculous fee for this service. Still don't understand how a lawyer can earn £800 for a sale and an agent £16.2k on the same apartment when not even monitoring the case correctly (assured us multiple times 'they cannot see exchange happening past end of May' which led us to losing £4.5k in rent elsewhere where we served notice early to tenants).
The case will be passed to the financial ombudsman office as I don't trust their internal reviews.
My advice is -> if you have a choice, then avoid them. If you are already stuck with them, don't take their advice throughout the process and demand they work in line with your (not their) expectations/instructions, especially if this is not your first transaction. You are paying them, not the buyer (even if they want to take advantage of the fact that it is a buyer's market at the moment and their mortgage broker may want to win additional business by promising to work closely with the estate agent).... Read more
NaN days ago