From: Richard Faulkner 
Newsgroups: uk.finance
Subject: Re: 70K for thirty minutes work!! Thats amazing!!!
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 01:21:11 +0100

In article <4lschvo7rht1rqt7agatm5ib3qhgkgms3l@4ax.com>, Daytona
 writes
>On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 02:19:06 +0100, "Stephen GoldenGun"
> wrote:
>
>>The
>>man I selected to act as my agent is really a good chap, the absolute
>>quentisential honorable estate agent, anyway, he told me that the "halifax"
>>a few years ago, where paying their negotiators a percentage if they could
>>persuade their current clients to "lower" their prices! Just to get them
>>sold faster. What do you think of that? You must know about it, I was told
>>it was in the Times and the major newspapers a few years back? Did you hear
>>of this?
>
>I read that the Halifax were attempting to keep the market moving, for the
>greater good and were attempting to get both existing & new clients to lower
>there prices. At one point there may even have been edicts from head office
>demanding a 10% cut on all properties on the books. 
>
>I didn't read that negotiators commission was directly linked to lowering
>prices. This could have been appalling PR for Halifax, if it became known (Sell
>your property for less with the Halifax!). I'm guessing, if such a system was in
>place, that the remuneration model was changed to reward number of sales, over
>sale price.
>
>Interested to hear if Richard, or anyone else, has information on this.
>
>Daytona

Firstly I would suggest that this type of thing has been going on for
many years. One of the famous name estate agents who sold out to a big
insurance company was well known for the company policy of getting
property on the books at any price, then talking the price down until it
sold. I heard that there was actually a specific script for the call to
a vendor.

Asthe mid '90's recession took a hold, I operated a price reduction
policy myself, in order to help people sell their houses - after all,
the value of the house they would buy would be less aswell.

However, I think we may be back to the days of some agents getting them
on the books at any price and then talking the price down, and the above
story/anecdotelends some support to this.

Funnily enough, I was reading the local paper tonight and saw an
"unnamed" agent advertising a house at £105,000 which couldnt be worth
more than £85,000 - "They are in cloud cuckoo land" I exclaimed.

Having said that, i put a house on the market a couple of weeks ago at
£130,000, thinking it was worth between £120K & £130K, and the vendor
suggesting that they agreed and they would consider any offers of
£125K+. Today, they called to tell me to put the price up to £155,000,
which is cloud cuckoo land. Having invested the money in putting the
property on the market, I now have a choice of blowing them out, or
agreeing to do what they ask in the hope that we either get really lucky
and get a very unusual purchaser, or that they eventually see sense and
drop the price again. I am also thinking that, having messed me about, I
may be happy to have my sign outside their house advertising my
business, rather than another agents sign.

So - some high prices are driven by sellers, and it would not be
unreasonable to work on them until they see sense.

Clearly I have lots of thoughts on this, but I think the enough provides
some food for thought.

-- 
Richard Faulkner