31.7.11 Estate Agent

I thought estate agents were quite keen to take many thousands of pounds for selling a house.  Most often, the criticism is that they take a rather large fee for a rather limited amount of work.  However, my gripe is nothing to do with the fees; if someone can sell my house at the right sort of price, then I'll pay them the percentage as per the deal.  To my amazement, though, it's not always straightforward to get one of the agents round to look at the house and suggest a deal.  Apparently, there's room enough in the market for certain fuckers to be 'picky'.  Cook and Forth, for example, rang to cancel the appointment that had been arranged by Mrs MWSC.  Apparently, in order for Mr Cook to deign to leave his cubby hole, we were required (said his assistant) to guarantee that we would give him the business.  Yes, that's right - without his having seen our property, or considered its true worth or discussed the price for which it might be marketed, and without his having discussed the terms to establish the percentage cut he would be taking for providing some sort of service, we were expected to guarantee that he would be given the job of selling our house.  Fuckin' half wit!

The assistant informed Mrs MWSC that there had recently been a spate of 'lost business', where people would call out Mr Cook only to award the business to someone else.  This was obviously inconveniencing Mr Cook and unnecessarily increasing the mileage on his car for no gain.  Not surprisingly, Mrs MWSC expressed disbelief at the suggestion that we would be guaranteeing the business, and grilled the assistant about the lunacy of such an approach.  "Don't have a go at me, I'm just relaying the information to you," she said, trying to avoid having to defend her boss's approach with anything like a proper argument.  Mrs MWSC suggested that there was most likely some very good reason or reasons why people decided not to proceed with using Cook and Forth.

For the record, a drive from the offices of Cook and Forth to the residence in question takes on average 15 minutes.  To my mind, that's a reasonable enough undertaking to encourage some speculation, towards accumulation of around £6000 for sticking a house on the market.  Oh well, never mind, I have enlisted the help of another estate agent, and Mr Cook has of course saved not just an hour of his time for the round trip and look at my house, but £3 worth of petrol.  That will no doubt give him the peace of mind to keep the second bar of his electric fire going a bit longer.

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