Home Truths

Estate agents need some positive PR, says Edel Morgan

Googling "ethical estate agent" gets some interesting results. There are estate agents all over the world, including Dublin, who are at pains to point out they are morally principled. The fact that they feel they have to do this says it all about the flak they get for being estate agents.

A few years ago one told me he believed anyone thinking of going into the profession should have their suitability assessed by way of a skin test "to make sure they've got a hide like a rhinoceros". He viewed it as essentially a sales job but, to the public, because property is such an emotive issue, he was just one gazump away from being the devil incarnate.

This perception seemed to trouble him and he was tired of being berated by drunk people at parties about the ills of the property market.

Your heart may not bleed but it strikes me that, if squirrels are rats with good PR, then estate agents are sales people in need of some positive spin. For this reason it's not surprising that some agents feel the need to tell the world they are ethical. Some highlight their honesty by exposing the unscrupulous tactics of other members of their profession.

Castle estate agents, based in Terenure, Sandyford and Tallaght, is one example. Its website outlines the tricks employed by some agents to hoodwink vendors and buyers, not least dummy bidding at auctions, price baiting and using advertising to promote themselves as much as the property whilst charging the vendor for the privilege.

Apparently one ploy is the hot and cold treatment - praising a property and its potential so a vendor will sign with them, only to pick faults with it afterwards and lower its estimated price.

Castle advises getting a written quote guarantee from the agent and says you should only pay them "if you get the price you were quoted or more" and "don't accept any excuses about the market. Granted, no one can know exactly what any home will sell for; but the agent can give you a price range and, if your home sells below the lowest point of the price range, do not pay the agent".

Pav Sheen, an agent turned whistle-blower on his profession, has written a book Tips, Tricks, and Traps - everything you need to know about estate agents which has been published in the UK. It says that some agents, including himself before his Damascus-like conversion, overvalue properties, invent fake viewers and offers. His view is that not all agents are bad "but many of them are not that great". Quite a damning comment coming from an insider but there are a few out there helping to rehabilitate the perception of estate agents. UK agent Saleboards, for example, gives 10 per cent of every sale to charity - it's raising money for an accommodation block in Uganda. Set up by husband and wife team Jonathan and Laura Newall, it charges a flat fee of £1,599 (€2,356) plus Vat and anyone unhappy with the service can go elsewhere and pay nothing if they fail to sell their property.

Irish company Green Valley Properties - which specialises in remote rural properties in Clare, Cork and south Galway - has no time for the kind of brochure double-speak that dares not mention the unpalatable truth. It likes to "call a spade a spade, not a long handled manual soil manipulator" says its website. "Our descriptions attempt to convey an accurate impression of what is really there. This, quite simply, helps to save the time and frustration of time-wasting visits to properties."

And, sure enough, its Castle View Cottage in Tulla, Co Clare is "curiously not a cottage, and there is no longer a view of a castle. This is a now derelict Georgian house with part of the roof falling in." A bungalow in Loughrea is "in good sound, basic condition. However, it has not been maintained to the best of standards, and could now be described as somewhat scruffy".

While it should serve as an inspiration that Green Valley Properties seems to thrive on this approach, some agents might argue that in the current market there's ethics, there's honesty and then there's professional suicide.

- emorgan@irish-times.ie