Matthewthomasresidential Reviews 3

Absolutely fantastic agent, best in the Derby area ♥️

Amazing from start to finish, our house sold after a week and the care received throughout the whole process has been second to none. Thank you all for your support, I’d recommend everyone to use you!

Husband signed a sale contract with this agency on the 9th of January. Initially he wanted to try to sell at 180k. We were aiming to make a move to a new town in Summer. The agent suggested to put it at 185k. The property was put on sale quickly and marketed on Zoopla and Rightmove. Pictures were taken and edited to such an extent they felt fake - we still decided to trust them. They posted the listings without blurring pictures of our daughter and featured the kitchen as the first photography on the listing instead of the living room, and bedroom 3 wasn't displayed. They blurred the pictures rapidly but we were already disappointed.

Didn't hear anything back from them for 12 days. Our property has new carpets throughout, an ensuite that has been redone, a large garden, 2 parking spaces, 3 bedrooms. We did work in every room. I called, they asked me point blank if we wanted to reduce the price of the property. I was gobsmacked. I told my husband he should let them go as we could still withdraw. He said that it was ok as we weren't in a hurry but it was concerning that they'd suggest a reduction within 2 weeks for a price the owner recommended. An agent called H, called to say: "A woman has seen your property and would like to visit but can only afford 167k " he told her no. The idiocy of it all is that H thought it was a good idea to let us know that this person wanted to visit as if we would be interested. Eventually we brought the price closer to the one my husband wanted initially (179950) on their advice. An agent sent a screenshot of the stats, it had been cropped so we couldn't see what property it was related to, it only showed views and nothing else. The lady said that's all they could see. Unfortunately, all I had to do was google Zoopla and Rightmove dashboards to see that you could see pageviews, clicks, calls and booked visits.

We had 1 visit about a week ago that was the end for them. Prior to that visit husband called the agency and the owner said that he knew we weren't desperate to which my husband replied that we wouldn't be reducing the price. The owner then said "There's not much else we can do". 2 days later we magically receive a call for a visit. On the day, the "buyer" was a single young man who was exploring his options and wanted to purchase a 3 bed semi with 2 parking spaces. As she could see the look on my face she quickly said that it does happen that people in this situation buy properties like ours. I had discussed plan B and C with hubby so initiated plan B which was to get out of the contract asap. I booked an evaluation with another agency, the new agent was also dumbfounded by the whole story. By using their services we would have access to all the stats this agency deliberately withheld from us. He was also shocked to learn the price our property was currently at, he showed us that by being at this price we were missing on potential buyers with higher budgets who were searching from 180k and up.

The last call I had with the vile Miss H was actually a very friendly one, imagine how embarrassed I felt for her. The ignominy of it all was that she was only nice because she finally realized what was about to happen. She sent us a copy of the contract telling us we had to pay 300 GBP to get out of it. We have paid, we are free. Use this agency at your own risk, they overinflate the prices in order to get the contract. They'll then insist that you lower the price after the grace period as they know they inflated it in the first place. Absolutely not recommended, beware.

We'll edit this review once our property has sold.