UK Landlord Forum / Life

I'm not sure if this estate agent is mad or onto something good here...

Russell Quirk, of Quirk Deakin, an estate agency based in Thurrock, is promising to pay the difference if any house he sells is worth less in five years. He's gambling on a regeneration of Thurrock (part of the Thames Gateway expansion) and that five years is enough time for values to pick up again.

What do you guys think about that? It's a nice offer, but will a bold move like that cost him his business?

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how has he underwritten it? I admire his positive attitude and am sure he is right, but if the @rse fell out of the market then I bet his guarantee is worthless, at least he has stimulated some attention.
Then again I was offered a too good to be true deal in Leeds the other day, silly % discount, guaranteed rental and guaranteed %capital appreciation!!

There are a lot of silly deals at the moment where developers are getting desperate. You got to be careful when buying right now, because a lot of things may seem too good to be true.

I'm not entirely sure how the entire process works. I'm assuming there will be some kind of contract. He seems very positive though:

"You could argue it is a gamble but my family and I have been in this business since 1957, and in my experience, it has never ever happened that prices have gone down and stayed down.

The agent probably has a point here. Even if we look at the last house price crash, it took a year for prices to bottom out before they began to rise again. In five years they were back where they were before the crash. Of course, the past can not always be used to predict the future but the underlying property pressures are there. Good luck to this agent for going against the trend.

DM

Property brought to market by private treaty or auction;Act as agents suppliers, but suggested the two sides on regional no conflict of interest exists; receiver suppliers, and recommends acceptance.