Forceshomes Reviews 48

Reply from Forceshomes

Updated Sep 21, 2023

Thank you for your feedback and it is important that we respond with context to your comments. Firstly the critical illness was present prior to you engaging us to assist you in purchasing a home. We were aware of your circumstances from the start and as a result, we accommodated you over the course of 17 months, despite the fact that our agreement is only for one year. Eventually, you informed us that you were unable to continue.

As we work on a fixed fee basis, every time we had to stop and start the process, we repeated work that had already been done, for which we could not charge and we were happy to do this. Your final bill was in fact just over £2,000, it increased due to the external recovery costs which were incurred before you finally paid but it was still under £3,000.

In regard to the search process, we do not simply send over links. Finding a property is a very complex and detailed process, which involves a multi disciplinary approach, often needing to refer to our solicitors and mortgage advisors for additional information. We find properties that meet the criteria and budget, there is a visual assessment of the property from the agent's photos to see if there are any obvious structural issues or problems in the street. Each property then has to be researched to determine if there are any immediate issues for mortgage lending or any obvious legal issues that may be identified further down the line once a purchase has commenced. We know from experience if an area has problems such as mining, flood, construction issues associated with the location etc. We also speak to agents to find out what the vendor's situation is and we ask them for further information which a buyer would not usually know to ask. If the property is suitable we then prepare a detailed report which explains everything you would want to know about the property and the area and this is done before a client takes time out of their busy schedule to attend a viewing. The whole point of our service is that we work in the background to provide a complex service that our clients do not see, in order to take away the stress and hassle.

After checking your file, I can see that you did indeed send in one property which unfortunately was not mortgageable.

Sadly, after all of our hard work, you refused to pay the invoice and instead of making a complaint to the Armed Forces Covenant, which we would have been happy to respond to, you made good on a threat to use your rank and position to cause problems for us, including leveraging your personal contacts from the Armed Forces Covenant Board Members to try and pressure us into canceling your invoice. At Forces Homes, we do not give preferential treatment to anyone based on their rank or contacts and whether our clients are spending £80,000 or £600,000 on a property, their home is their castle and we will provide the same level of diligence and support to all of our clients. As we explained to you, in order that we can keep our services affordable to all service personnel, we cannot absorb costs for the rare occasions that clients do not progress a purchase. If we did this we would have to increase our costs for everyone.

Our team is passionate about helping our armed forces secure their own homes, there is no job satisfaction whatsoever in a case which does not complete. We fully understand why you were unable to continue, but as explained, you made an informed decision to retain our services and we do have to charge for the work that was carried out in good faith.

We sincerely wish you and your family all the very best.

Reply from Forceshomes

Updated Sep 14, 2023

Thank you for your feedback and apologies for the delayed reply, we have just adopted this profile.

Our contract is very clearly laid out, it shows the steps and the costs that would be incurred at each step if for any reason you need to terminate the agreement before completing a purchase and you were charged accordingly. This allowed you to make an informed decision before committing to using our service.

In regard to your comment about arguing with your house choices. You were on a Purchase Management Agreement, where you find and send in properties for our team to research, providing you with detailed information about the property and area, and any issues you may encounter during a purchase from either a mortgage or legal point of view or on further resale. Our job is to reduce time spent traveling to and viewing properties that may be unsuitable and also to mitigate the risk and costs of a failed purchase. We do not argue with clients about their choice of property, we simply arm them with the information they need to make their own decision about whether the property is suitable for them.

The property that we secured for you was marketed very low and was on for offers over, which generated a lot of interest. At the point at which your offer was made the agent had a full diary of forward viewings. The vendor had a figure that they wanted to achieve and an offer slightly lower than that was accepted because it was a very strong offer in terms of how it was presented and the fact that we had you fully administered and ready to progress a purchase. Had the forward viewings gone ahead it would have been extremely likely that a bidding war would have ensued and the ultimate sale price would have exceeded the price at which your offer had been accepted.