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Sure an agent would show it but only after they show any other house they could find , And the reasons are : 1 to 2 % vs 2.5 to 3% and when you deal with them you are doing most if not all the work, With any other agent it is usually easier to get answers and help with any problem you run into
As for myself
If i see a house they have listed and it fits into my buyers needs
i have no problem showing it to them ,but i know in the back of my mind what i am in for if they decide to make an offer .
Sure you may be right, but.....my cousin never had any problems with them and if they had to choose again, I think they would deal with Foxton again. I guess you have to get lucky
Well what I just typed got erased but I will do it again just because of the problems I have with Foxtons!
With Foxtons you get what you pay for plain and simple. Here are the truthful reason on why to not use Foxtons:
-Although they give you a discounted commission, you get what you paid for. The agents are SALARIED workers so there is no incentive for them to actually work hard because no matter what they do, they are still making their $30,000 a year. Yes they get a LITTLE commission for listings and sales they obtain but it is nothing like if I sold or obtained and sold a listing.
-If you ever have a question for your agent, you will almost always never get in contact with them. Again they are salaried workers for the most part pulling 9-5pm shifts. Also, if you want an open house, or to ask a question, you usually will not get an answer and usually will never get it from your agent. Cell phone numbers do not exist at Foxtons!!!
-The commission issue is huge and the main reason they do not get their listings sold. When they first started they offered only 1% on the sale of a property which is nothing for the amount of work that I, as an agent have to do. So you are saying that if I sell a $500,000 house, I am only worth $5,000 but comparable agents can get $15,000+/-? That is just ridiculous. Now because of the turn in the market Foxtons has FINALLY changed and now give out 2% to buyers agents but the problem is the work that I do is not worth it. I will explain in the next line.
-The work that buyers agents have to do with Foxtons turns them away from their listings simply because the Sellers/Listing Agent does NOTHING!! During the whole Offer process and Under Contract process, it is like pulling teeth at their agency. You can never reach the agent and you can never get in contact with their "Under Contract Department." Yes you heard me right. Once the home goes under contract, the listing agent has nothing to do with it anymore. It gets sent to a different department and they NEVER know what is going on with the deal. And oh did I mention, that department only works 9am - 5pm and even during business hours you only get their voicemail! If this happens how am I supposed to coordinate inspections, appraisals, home issues, and other items? Also why am I the only one that has to work with the attorneys to get the deal out of Attorney Review and Under Contract? This is supposed to be a mutual effort but everyone that I have worked with has done NOTHING to help me during this.
I wanted to explain this all in full so that no one thinks that I am an agent just jealous of their practice. This is the truth and I hope that you stay away from them because if you don't, you will most likely be very unhappy during the whole process; especially since they lock you in for at least six months or so I have heard.
wow Thanks for the education. They sound like a nightmare to deal with. I am filing that info away. Their ads always draw me in because they always have a lot of pictures with their properties.
We used them to try and sell our townhouse - horrible experience.
Yes there website is great, wonderful marketing plan, but once you sign that is it. We never heard from our agent, I would call and never get him on the phone. We had a lock box on the house, it was empty an agent could go in anytime. I get a call one day saying there is someone in the front and they want to see the house. They couldn't get me on the phone so the other agent left. I called Foxtons and told them there is a lock box, they screwed up.
We only listed with them for 4 months, after that we went with Remax - what a HUGE difference. Tons of feedback from our agent, she sold the place in about a month.
You get what you pay for! I can't tell you how many times I wanted to show one of their listings, only to never be able to get anyone from Foxton's on the phone to make an appointment. Is that looking out for the sellers' best interest??
We used them to try and sell our townhouse - horrible experience.
Yes there website is great, wonderful marketing plan, but once you sign that is it. We never heard from our agent, I would call and never get him on the phone. We had a lock box on the house, it was empty an agent could go in anytime. I get a call one day saying there is someone in the front and they want to see the house. They couldn't get me on the phone so the other agent left. I called Foxtons and told them there is a lock box, they screwed up.
We only listed with them for 4 months, after that we went with Remax - what a HUGE difference. Tons of feedback from our agent, she sold the place in about a month.
Amen. This was precisely our experience. Though I saved about 10k on commissions, I think if the house was marketed better, I would have easily recouped the difference from a motivated buyer. Their angle was that they (Foxtons) had an MLS link to Realtor.com, and that most perspective buyers found their way to homes via the internet. We endured the identical lock box cacaphony situation at least twice (may have been 3 times). Also, Foxtons only sponsored one open house. They were not obligated to do any more. Finally, the commission issue that others have mentioned on this thread was something that Foxtons (obviously) did not mention to us during their sales pitch: why would they? In retrospect, though, it makes sense. Why would other agents want to show buyers a Foxtons house when their commissions were being marginalized, due to the Foxtons policy?
wow Thanks for the education. They sound like a nightmare to deal with. I am filing that info away. Their ads always draw me in because they always have a lot of pictures with their properties.
As an Agent, my experience trying to sell a Foxton home is as follows:
I have tried twice in the last 2 years ONLY because my Buyers saw the homes on line and asked to see them.I will always accomodate a Buyers request, but since I have several hundred other homes to show first, I generally dont need to consider Foxtons listings any other time.
Both times, after a couple of trys, a couple of days in a row, could not get the Foxton "listing agent" to call me back to set appointment to show.
Both times, my Buyers called the same Foxton office and were shown the property within a day or two by a Foxton Agent. Both times fortunately they came back to me and we found something else they liked better.
The fact is that even if they made it easy, I cannot afford to work for the small percentage of commision Foxton offers me, as the buyers agent, on a regular basis.I work really hard, invest a lot of time and money in my business and deserve to be paid a fair commission.
I suggest you use a local agency that has a good track record in your neighborhood. The sales history of any Agent or Agency is easily available and they should provide it to you. The proof of success is in the facts.Have the Foxton agent show you their results in YOUR neighborhood as well as the sales of other agencies in your area... who does the most business? who gets the best prices? who provides the most service? and how quickly do they get results on avg? Ask the questions and you will know who to use.
The market is not good and you need all the help you can get...Im all for saving money...but
as the others have said...you really do get what you pay for.
Best of luck
Foxtons are closing shop so if you haven't listed you are safe!!
Hi Guys
This is just my 2 cents on my ordeal, though at this stage it doesn't matter but I learnt a lesson
Susienj made a great point "you get what you pay for"
Before we listed our house we sat down to try and figure out which real estate company to use. Foxtons with the low % attracted us. My house has been viewed by many other real estate companies but foxtons haven't even showed it once. Like others, getting feedback or having them return our calls is almost impossible. We have been banging our head against the wall with them and are tied into a contract A friend of a friend of a friend told us that she avoids showing foxtons homes, if someone insists then she would show it but otherwise when she is putting possibilities together for clients she will avoid them. Wish we had met her 4 months ago <bangs head against wall one more time> It' obvious that they reel you in with the low % and hope that some other real estate company will come in and sell it. That sounds fine to me but when other real estate companies want to avoid them you are scr*wed!!!!!
Now for good news, well I feel it's good - my realtor called this evening "Foxtons is closing shop as of Friday!" My first impression was then I was thinking why the heck am I feeling that way so after 30 seconds I'm now all !!!!!!!!!!!! Come Friday I'm going to be a happy camper.
Next time around I'm listening to JKasper (Thanks and well said) "I suggest you use a local agency that has a good track record in your neighborhood" I thought that was Foxtons ... silly, silly me!
Now for good news, well I feel it's good - my realtor called this evening "Foxtons is closing shop as of Friday!" My first impression was then I was thinking why the heck am I feeling that way so after 30 seconds I'm now all !!!!!!!!!!!! Come Friday I'm going to be a happy camper.
Next time around I'm listening to JKasper (Thanks and well said) "I suggest you use a local agency that has a good track record in your neighborhood" I thought that was Foxtons ... silly, silly me!
Good Luck
If you are going to interview agents see my Agent Questions post
good luck. I'll have to go find the article about the closing.
When I was a realtor the only way I could ever get into a Foxtons listing was if it was on lockbox. One house was empty, the other one was a mess - clearly no one had ever advised the homeowner how to stage the house. The company is difficult to deal with, and the money for cooperating brokers is not worth the hassle. That is why agents always show them last. No one likes working for free, let alone working to make someone else money.
A buyer working with a Foxtons agent put an offer in on a house that was listed by my broker - and attempted to go over the head of the listing agent by just knocking on the door to present her offer, and get the seller to agree to all sorts of goofy things - when the listing agent found out she had a lot of damage control to do to protect the seller - threatened to bring charges against the agent, and they quickly backed down. She felt it was not that the agent was trying to be a wheeler dealer, it was more like the agent (a newbie) was not well trained in the art of negotiating with other brokers.
Consistently on the NJ MLS I noted that many Foxton's listings were sold by Foxtons for much less than their list price - back when the market was hot - and less than comparible properties - so saving money on the commission actually COST some homeowners money out of their pocket.
The brochures are nice, but you are not getting what you pay for in terms of seller representation in the marketplace with them.
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Sell it yourself
then I was thinking why the heck am I feeling that way so after 30 seconds I'm now all 
!!!!!!!!!!!! Come Friday I'm going to be a happy camper. 
