Estate agents beware - you are about to be judged.
Labour's Stella Creasy has given details of her awards system to mark the best - and worst - estate agents, letting agents, landlords and tenants in her London E17 constituency.
The awards will be made this autumn after nominations close on September 1 but although they appear strictly local, it is likely that they will generate national publicity.
Creasy, after all, is Labour's consumer affairs spokesperson and the judging will take place shortly before the party's annual national conference.
Individuals can enter anonymously although the MP's website, which carries a nomination form, urges voters to leave contact details. There are eight sections to the nomination:
- Best 'Estate Agent to House' (initial customer service, ease of organising a viewing, listening to your price specification or showing you things you don't want, etc);
- Worst 'Estate Agent to House'(initial customer service, ease of organising a viewing, listening to your price specification or showing you things you don't want etc);
- Best 'Offer to Completion' (how helpful the estate agent was during this process, was their information honest and up to date);
- Worst 'Offer to Completion' (how helpful the estate agent was during this process, was their information honest and up to date);
- Best Selling experience (agent fees, communication, helpful in terms of organising viewings at your property, no pressure to accept offers and move when it may not be best etc.);
- Worst Selling Experience (agent fees, communication, helpful or not in terms of organising viewings at your property, pressure to accept offers and move when it may not be best etc.);
- Nomination for the Most Inventive Excuse for not Carrying out a Service;
- Kindest Gesture from an Estate Agent Award.
%20-%20IMAGE%20Client%20Accounting%20%E2%80%93%20what%20are%20your%20options.jpg)
Comments
I had difficulty understanding some of the questions so as a graduate what hope do the public have. No doubt the clients disgruntles with their agent will have forgotten how appalling their cheap solicitor was or that in a rising market there are more than one buyer for a property or and what is more crucial that we act for the sellers best interests and not the buyers. I was always taught that people who live ion glass houses should never throw stones - Stella take note, where would you rank in a similar pole
This is rather ironic. I'm used to seeing councils shifting blame onto landlords and the PRS but now MPs are attacking estate agents! You have to see the funny side.
Big welcome to Stella Creasy move! She will do even better to address the problems with Freeholders and appointed by them Managing Companies, who are ripping off the long-term leaseholders of buy-to-let properties. The London Valuation Tribunal is teethless and favours huge, unreasonable fees to the leaseholders, which they have no other way to deal with, but to pass to the tenants. Growing rents are NOT the leaseholders' fault, but Freeholders and their managing Companies
'It is likely that they will generate national publicity' - says it all really. A cheap PR trick if ever I saw one from Labour.
How about Estate Agent Poses 8 questions about MP's Best worst MP for keeping promises, achieving results, claiming expenses, understanding their constituents concerns, turning up in parliament, public speaking, taking cash for questions, having a track record of success.
Oh great, this again. Let's celebrate the worst aspects of our industry with a headline-making award, that'll help. Tackle the problem (and I don't think the problem is as bad as Stella Creasy and others would have you believe) rather than coming up with cheap and tacky gimmicks like this. Because, if we're going to play that game, it wouldn't make comfortable reading if the tables were turned. We could quite easily think up a set of awards for under-performing MPs now, couldn't we
I suspect like many I look forward to similar criteria aimed at MP's and local councilors, particularly the one 'Most Inventive Excuse for not Carrying out a Service'