April 2015
Featured in this insight: Financial services
Estate agents caused 88 per cent of Londoners to have bad experiences: A recent survey – on behalf of estate agency, Strawberry Star - has found that in the UK, more than 4.4 million people believe that an estate agent broke a promise. Respondents from the capital had the worst experience than any other area.
Of the respondents in London, 15 per cent believed that an estate agent broke a promise and 88 per cent claimed to have had some kind of a bad experience with one.
Of all the UK respondents in the survey, 9 per cent said that they felt there was a lack of transparency from estate agents.
The findings identified a difference in the kind of issues that different age groups experience when buying a house. For example, 8 per cent of those aged 25 to 34 said that they felt pressured into buying a property, which is twice the national average.
The survey showed that the thing which frustrates clients the most is when an estate agent places more importance on earning commission than finding the right property for a buyer. This was cited by more than 7.5 million people. Of those in London, 18 per cent agreed.
The CEO of Strawberry Star, Dorian Beresford, said of findings: "Consumers both at home and overseas continue to be dramatically underserved by their agents. The level of unsatisfied customers here in the UK is astonishing and representative of the frankly abysmal service delivered by many in the industry."
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