Estate Agent Portal Jiggery Pokery

Estate agents, or some of them, are at it again, but what are they up to this time? Well, it’s called (or rather, I called it) “portal price jiggery-pokery.” But what exactly is that? What a wonderful industry I find myself in the midst of. But anyway, I’m here to call them out on their little tricks that they try to pull on members of the public.

Portal price jiggery-pokery is when agents take a property, lower the price enough for the portals to trigger an email notification, which brings it to your attention. By the time you look, they’ve raised the price back to where it was once again, and it’s happening more and more.

Here’s an example of a property for sale in Northampton. This went on the market on the 29th of July this year at £600,000. On the 7th of August, it was reduced from £600,000 to £550,000, and then on the 1st of September, it was once again reduced from £550,000 to £500,000. But wait, two days later, the price went up from £500,000 to £550,000, and then £550,000 down to £500,000.

The reason agents do that is firstly because they often overvalue properties to win the listings rather than being honest with people. When the listings are based on their merit rather than lies, and these lies do not help anybody. As you know from my previous videos for the last year, I have been saying where the market is, and I have been calling out the entire industry for peddling a lie about the prices in property because that doesn’t help anyone. It is the height of non-professional behavior because next-time buyers, you’re not doing them any favors.

Your lies are leaving them put and preventing them from moving on with their lives. If they’re going to sell for less, then they need to do their sums and offer on the next house accordingly. It shouldn’t really make much difference to them. And if they happen to be moving upwards, they may even benefit. If they’re moving downwards, no matter what happens, the property at the cheaper end, which is in more demand at the moment (or demand hasn’t fallen as much as it has higher up), because you not only have people at the bottom of the chain buying, but you’ve also got quite a few people who overborrowed, and as interest rates have gone up, they want to move downwards as well. But regardless, you don’t help people by lying to them; you just mislead them. You give them false expectations on price, and rather than selling their home and moving on, they are sat there holding on with an unrealistic price in a falling market.

The real victims over the last year, as I’ve said many times, have been the first-time buyers who have bought through this year based on misinformation from agents who should have told them the truth. And they are the ones that I have been most concerned about.

Now, you may be wondering how I have access to the figures that you’ve seen. I have a plug-in extension rather on Chrome called “property log,” and when you add that to your Chrome browser, when you go to Rightmove, you can see all the little ups and downs in prices. When you’re looking, make a note of which agents are doing this and remember them for the future because just as they are deceiving the public and their sellers by not professionally advising them, they could be doing the same to you when you are dealing with them, either as a buyer or as a seller.