Five most common estate agent 'tricks of the trade' to watch out for when hunting for your new home

It’s amazing how often estate agents will use blurry, pixelated photos, which is unforgivable, but try to look past this poor first impression if you feel like the property might be suitable. Agents are known for quoting inaccurate floor plans with incorrect or embellished square footage under the guise of ‘for illustrative purposes only.’ Often, in their calculations, floor plans consider eaves storage and attics without staircases as actual usable square footage. Other tricks to look out for include the use of floor plans where doors are hung the wrong way around, or those which account for a bath tub when there is only a shower – misleading icons like these are something you need to be savvy about. It’s even common for agents to use incorrect or misleading compass data so the property appears to face south, for example. Also, you always know which properties are excessively small because they won’t include a floor plan in the listing, in order to get someone to view it without prior knowledge of its size. You need to become familiar with estate agent lingo when it comes to descriptions that don’t accurately describe the property, or embellish its features. To avoid falling into this trap, you should always ask the agent you’re dealing with to confirm the property is still available when booking a viewing for the first time.