Rate Haart

Haart are a joke. I had to type Prospective Customer because I am unable to select Employee. I worked as a manager for Haart for a few months before quitting as soon as my pay arrived in my bank account.

They rip customers off with their fees charging fees on a sliding scale. What they do is over value a property to win the business. Lets say they tell the owner the house is worth £210,000, but really it is worth £190,000. They then pull out a table and along the £210,000 line it says £4725 (Equivilent to 2.25% for example) they write this figure on the agreement and the owner agrees to pay this plus VAT on completion. Of course the house doesn't sell for £210,000. The vendor is pushed into dropping the selling price until they eventually sell for £190,000. The vendor is then asked to pay £4725, which is now equivilent to nearly 2.5% plus VAT. Had they put the owner on a fee of 2.25% the owner would have paid less commission and probably wouldn't have agreed to pay 2.5% on day one if he knew that this would be the eventual fee!

They treat staff very badly, moving them between offices 30 miles away with a few hours notice. Staff are unfamiliar with the area, branch and are completely ineffective. They are disorganised, heavily paperbased and spend more time completing stats sheets on how many viewings they have booked each day than concentrating of getting houses sold.

Staff worry about getting the wrong people around houses just to get their figures up. Moral was very low while I was there and people were leaving after only a few months of abuse. This left little local knowledge in any one office, yet staff were told to wing it and pretend they knew the area, often making big mistakes as they went.

They sponsor football teams in an effort to appeal to the local community, but it is more about advertising their name behind the goal nets for the TV cameras.

They are a nasty company and when they start putting their staff and customers first, before their huge profits, then maybe I could say a good word about them.

Their sharp practices were enough for me to quit estate agency when I left them and I returned to an office management job working with happy people where I was allowed to manage, rather than manage in name only. Avoid.