Are UK house prices being boosted fraudulently?

My wife and I got into a dispute recently with one of Britain's leading estate agents (I won't mention the name). We were house hunting, found a place and after paying the holding fees, the price suddenly jumped £25 from the original listing of £600 per month. After much to and fro, we either had to pay the money or be on the street. It was only later when we reviewed the property online that it listed the property as being let for £650, a price never mentioned at all before then. Now £25 may not sound a lot but I'm wondering if this bunking up of the price is more widespread.

The trap comes, not for us but for future renters and buyers to the area. When looking at other properties to guage the worth of the area, are estate agents trying to generate the illusion that people are paying more for their places than they actually are.

Does anyone have a similar experience of this? Quite frankly, I am livid with the price switching and so I'll be bring these guys down if this is truly what they're doing.

Th8nker

estate agents are on the same pare of our politians,
good luck mate s&f for your crusade.

Mb the value of houses is gonug up cas the value of out currency is going down.

This happens all the time.
If you could check the situation here in Geneva (Switzerland) you would be chocked.

Sometimes they hold the houses/ap. back for months, just to increase its value.
They wont list the apparments/house anywhere, but you can clearly see the places are empty. Sometimes i even talked with the "concierges" of some places and they could confirm me that the places were indeed empty.

Here, its common that the agencies simply "throw out" old renters from their apartments so they can re-rent the very same appartment for much more.

It took me near 1 year to get this one where i live. And i only got it because a good friend of mine knew someone inside the rent agency.
But i couldnt scape from the very high price.

Things like this make me so angry. As consumers we get abused for almost everything we buy especially in the UK. You'd expect trading standards to be on issues like this. Best thing to do is get it all written down, dated and signed by both parties. It's disgusting how Estate agents can get away with this type of thing.

Also think, if they did this to 1000 people, that's £25,000 a month, so £300,000 extra per year. But I think the figure would be closer to 100,000 who could be affect by price increases like this!


[edit on 7-6-2009 by Mark2009]

This is a common tactic here in the states used by leasing companies and management firms. The amount expected is usually based on the first couple of interested "renter's" credit scores. If you have a good credit score the more you can afford, etc. That is why alot of rental listings, at least here in Florida, don't come with rent price listings. They instead list all of the wonderful things provided at a "low affordable rate".