Our international property website Immogo is ‘for sale by owner’ only. We do not want real estate professionals, such as brokers or their agents, contact our clients. First of all, because they are our clients. We only get paid if we find their buyer and we don’t want other sellers poaching in our painstakingly filled pond. Secondly, our owners/sellers have chosen to put their house on Immogo because they want to sell directly to private buyers. They try to circumvent ‘agents immobilier’ and do not want to be bothered by the same through the reaction form on Immogo.
Unfortunately, there are still agents who don’t (want to) understand this. In spite of the very clear and direct messages on all the language versions of our international property site, they insist on contacting our sellers. Sometimes openly, by explaining that they may have clients / buyers for the particular property. And sometimes more furtively, pretending to be a private buyer, only to be found out when they state their true business. This is very annoying, for the sellers, who complain to us about it. And for us, because we can’t prevent this from happening.
All property agents are equal. But some are more equal than others.
If the complaints from our sellers/advertisers are correct, the majority of the agents trying to bother them are from the franchise company Leggett Immobilier. The question arises… have they been instructed to pay no heed to the ‘no agents please’ messages and use the contact form on private sites anyhow? Or is it something they do without any coaching from the company?
We don’t know wether the disregard of the clear ‘no commercial agents’-request is illegal or just rude. We will however point out that it might not be a good idea to do business with people who have so little respect for the wishes of their clients. If these agents have no regards for the rules on a small level like this, who knows what they might do if important sums of money are involved.