Estate Agents speak

Estate Agents have their own special language, small and pokey = bijou etc etc!

Deceptively spacious - small, Ready to put your own finishing touches - DIY Bodge up, Ripe for modernisation - falling down, Individually styled - a nightmare of clashing colours, modern decor - grey, grey, grey.

Rear courtyard = back yard
Compact third bedroom = can't swing a cat
May need updating = complete overhaul.

My rant - surely anyone who is paid to present TV programmes should be able to speak well and use at least GCSE English? Same with estate agents' details: contemporay, advocado etc I even saw one that must have had auto correct for a mis-typed conservatory, can't remember what the word was but it had nothing to do with housing! However I also think that the people paying a vast amount to the agent should read the details before they are published! Our last agent said I reminded her of her mother because I insisted the apostrophes were correct!

Agreed Nonnie. According to a local estate agent, we live in a 'sort after' village.

We went to view a house which had a 'bathroom with bath' - yes, that was exactly what it was! Just a bath!

We haven't bought or sold for a long time, but I always insist in seeing the house details before they are issued, so that I can check them, if nothing else to check they have the room dimensions correct.

We nearly didn't look at a house once because the two smaller bedrooms were too small, accordingto the details. However, at a time before floor plans, I sat down to work out how the house was laid out and quickly realised that the dimensions of the smallest bedroom had been attributed to the second smallest as well.

We then went and viewed the house, my deduction was correct and we bought it.How many potential purchasers didn't view the house because 2 of the bedrooms wereso small?

You are quite right Nonnie. I look at Rightmove as a hobby and the estate agent's use of English is a selling point or not as the case may be as far as I'm concerned.

'Defused lighting' worried me slightly!

"Defused lighting",, Annodomini made me laugh out loud thanks

Why am I laughing at your comments? I am although none of them surprises me.

Alexa I still look at Rightmove although no desire to move, I just like to look. I have seen 4 bedroom houses with floor plans showing only 3 but I have also seen them missing things out in the description which are in the floor plans. When we moved 10 years ago a friend and I were thinking of starting our own agency because we were convinced we could do better but in the end decided we had easier lives as 'ladies who lunch'.

I wish they would say which way the garden faces. Some of us have strong views and could avoid wasting their time if we knew. Easy if you already know the area but not so easy if you are just going for viewings. I asked an agent before viewing one house and they couldn't tell me.

No wonder Purple Bricks are doing so well, they don't do much for their money but great if you are low down the buying chain.

Purple Bricks are NOT doing well!

Really Hilda? Just last week I heard on R4 how much money they had made. Perhaps I only listened to part of it, my mind wanders sometimes!

Yup, the contention is that they have overstretched themselves. They are in Australia now. Yes they have taken millions in fees - everyone pays up front. However there is no incentive for them to actually nurse a sale through or be conscientious about anything. The company has had quite a few scares over the last couple of years and if it did go....then all those upfront fees would be gone.
A relative of ours is trying to buy a house she fell in love with without realising the implications of it being with PB. There is no real EA to act as a buffer and the negotiations are very tense.

Yes, there have been several aricles in the paper saying quite a number of the online agencies are faltering and Purple Bricks in particular is in trouble.

In the end you get what you pay for and, at the end of the day, having an agent sitting in an office in the High Street who knows his area and will nurse you through a deal, chase recalitrant purchasers and dilatory solicitors, has a lot to recommend him - and of course charges more.

I moved quite recently and spent a lot of time back and forth with the EA re-writing the details before the house went live on Rightmove. I don't understand why other people don't do this.
One common error is saying there is a flour garden.

Sorry if I have posted this before - but it was funny.

Went round potential house (which they did buy in the end) with my DD and SIL - house is an old farm in the country. As we were looking out of an upstairs window onto a small courtyard, a massive rat ran across - and SIL said "Wow, that's a big rat!" (he didn't care - he is a country lad). Rather dolled up towny estate agent, trying to play this down, said: Oh no, I am sure it was a vole." We were all in stitches!

As I am looking to purchase for my final move, a flat 150 miles from where I currently live, I use Rightmove as a way of filtering out those I want to view on my occasional trips down there.
Have come across some incredible mistakes on the floor plans, including one that had no door opening into the Living room at all. Dimensions often just do not add up, they show a Living Room running the entire length of the flat with a door from a hallway with rooms off that either side. Yet those rooms measurements add up to more than the Living room!!!!
Those that try to show built in cupboards/ wardrobes on their floor plans are often totally at odds with the photos they show of those rooms.
Do wish all floor plans would also show positions of radiators -
I get very annoyed with photos which show umpteen views from the windows/balcony (however 'amazing' this may be), and then very few of the actual rooms in the flat.
In my local area, there is a photo of definite inner terrace house, which proudly proclaims 'Semi-detached property.....'
Oh well, off to view four more flats in eight days time, wonder how many errors I will find then.
I have, in the past, told the EA, when viewing flats, of their errors, but none get corrected.

Idly wasting my time with Zoopla recently, I came across something headlined "3-bedroomed detached house". The description, floor plan and all the photographs were of A two-bedroomed mid-terrace house!

Luckygirl You should post that story in Facebook it would be copied again and again. There is the seed of an idea for a sitcom in it too.

Get writing! - we can share the proceeds!

We still chuckle at EA blurb. One description "recently decorated to a low standard" really nice to know. We didn't view that one.

Our first house was described as ‘a quasi-semi’.
It was an end-terrace

My neighbour's son bought a house that was described as 'link detached'. That description usually means that the house is detached from the next house, but with a garage joining the two.

Well no, this one wasn't like that. It was an upside down house, so the front door opened onto the upstairs where the bedrooms were. There was indeed a garage separating the house from next door on that level. Downstairs, however, the living room shared a party wall with next door's living room, underneath their respective garages. 'Link detached'? I don't think so!