Simon

Oct 17, 2024

Dexters…another third rate estate agent

We have bought and sold a number of properties over the last 30 plus years with differing experiences. None of these have been particularly positive. We hired Dexter’s in London Bridge in April 2024 as they seemed to come across from the outset as if they genuinely seemed to know what they were doing. Being at the top of the chain in central London with no property to buy, the process should have been relatively straightforward. After some initial viewings we received an offer within the first few days although we had noted the complete lack of agent knowledge during the viewing process as we heard the answers provided to viewers over our Ring security cameras. An example: viewer asked how old our 1920’s property was. Answer…late 1960’s, and so on. Basic stuff and quite astonishing ! I negotiated the offer with the agent who seemed to think a significantly lower price to the one we had set might have been acceptable. Having made it clear it was not, we accepted pretty much what we were asking for in the first place. I should not have needed to have held that conversation. As is the way in England & Wales a buyer can pull out of the process at any time leading up to exchange. Needless to say that after 6 weeks of engaging with solicitors and getting everything ready, our buyers pulled out of the sale with no reason given. We believe they couldn’t get their mortgage agreed and had not been vetted properly by Dexters. They didn’t agree of course. We accepted another offer 2 weeks later, in June. The buyers had their leasehold property under offer. The next few months were painful to say the least. Our solicitors did all the work and were extremely responsive, going above and beyond chasing the buyers solicitors who in turn chased at the bottom of the chain. The leasehold nature of our buyers property made things needlessly complicated with their buyers solicitors taking an eternity to get anything done. This was not helped by the shockingly poor leasehold management company being involved, L&Q. Our buyers were as equally frustrated as we were, having got everything into place on their side and wanted to be in no later than September as they was expecting their first baby that month. Notwithstanding this, throughout the whole process we were never kept updated by Dexters. We constantly had to chase them and they seemed to have entirely forgotten that we were their clients. Out fixed rate mortgage deal expired during this process resulting in significant additional mortgage cost plus paying double fees to our solicitors due to the first sale falling through. The silence from Dexter’s was appalling. It is high time estate agents were required to be both professionally qualified and licensed. It seemed to us that paying the estate agents (for doing very little) more than 3 times the amount of our solicitors not only grossly unfair but inequitable and nonsensical ! Our solicitor did all the work, the agents didn’t appear to give a damn. After more than 6 months from the time our property went on the market, we finally completed in early October and we hope our buyers have recovered from an unnecessarily convoluted and stressful experience. So much for a “straightforward process”. Dexters “client service” was singularly absent. We would not recommend them to anyone.