Panorama
“She’s probably done me out of quite a bit of money – I feel angry and conned.”
Julie Gallagher believes her home was sold at a lower price than it could have gone for. There was a buyer who might have offered more for it, an undercover investigation by Panorama can reveal.
Her Connells estate agent appeared to sideline this potential buyer in favour of someone else who had agreed to take out an in-house mortgage.
That mortgage was said to be worth about £2,000 to Connells, while the company potentially stood to make £10,000 in total by arranging add-on services and selling the buyer’s property too.
“She sat on this sofa… and said she was actually working for me and she obviously is not, she’s working for the company’s ends,” says Julie. “How dare Connells do that? Just appalling.”
Panorama decided to investigate the company after speaking to more than 20 independent financial advisers (IFAs) and mortgage advisers from across England and Wales who had concerns about how the company operated.
One of the biggest estate agencies in the UK, Connells runs 80 chains with more than 1,200 branches. Our undercover reporter, Lucy Vallance, got a job in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in an own-brand office.
During her six weeks there in February, she found evidence that the senior branch manager favoured prospective buyers, if they were planning to take out Connells in-house services, like conveyancing or mortgages, because it made more money for the company.
Connells told us it is “committed to treating all customers and prospective buyers fairly.”
Panorama also investigated the online estate agency Purplebricks, after we heard concerns it had been trying to attract sellers by overvaluing properties.
Once a customer was signed up, staff then tried to convince them to cut the asking price, earning commission if successful – a former sales negotiator told us. The whistleblower, who worked for the company between June and October 2024, also filmed online meetings for Panorama.
Purplebricks told us price reductions were once a target for rewarding staff, but that is no longer the case, and it does not overvalue properties to win instructions.
‘Hot buyers’
In Abingdon, the undercover reporter found that trying to arrange mortgages could be as important as selling houses – and that Connells’ staff felt under pressure to get people signed up.
Connells, like many other estate agencies, has an in-house mortgage-brokering team.
The independent financial advisers we have spoken to – who compete for customers with estate agents’ in-house services – say this pressure can lead to some agents in the industry playing fast and loose with the rules.
One practice known as “conditional selling” is forbidden by the Code of Practice for Residential Estate Agents, of which many companies across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland – including Connells – are signatories.
This is when an estate agent suggests, implies or tells you that you must arrange things like mortgages or conveyancing services through their in-house teams – or there will be negative consequences for a deal.
It means estate agents signed up to the code know they should not discriminate against prospective buyers who don’t use their in-house services.
Connells’ senior branch manager told our reporter, at one point, that she understood conditional selling was not allowed.
But that wasn’t the full picture.
Estate agents are supposed to work in the best interests of their clients, but we saw how pressure for profit shaped decisions at Connells in Abingdon.
One Saturday, our reporter was asked to host an open-house viewing for Julie’s four-bedroom house, which was on the market for offers over £300,000. It attracted great interest. Fifteen people attended and others also wanted to book separate viewings.
But the following Monday, the senior branch manager seemed interested in two possible buyers – those speaking to Connells’ in-house brokers. The next day, via WhatsApp, she told her staff not to arrange any more viewings on Julie’s house.
One signed up to a Connells-brokered mortgage and became known by the senior branch manager as a “hot buyer”.
A board in the office titled “Hot Buyers” had the names of all house hunters at the branch who had agreed to take out a mortgage or a conveyancing package through Connells.
The hot buyer for Julie’s house made an initial offer, which she rejected, but eventually upped it to successfully secure the property.
There was another potential buyer interested in the house who appeared to have deeper pockets – a cash buyer. She wasn’t taking out a mortgage through the company.
Connells told us they spoke to the cash buyer the Monday after the open house and that she was undecided about putting in an offer. A call from the cash buyer later the same day was missed, said the company, and not followed up.
When the undercover reporter told the office administrator that the cash buyer might have offered more, she was told that “just a sale” was “not good enough” for Connells.
“They will probably more likely aim to get somebody who’s signed up with us and wants to use our conveyancing, as opposed to someone who is a cash buyer,” said the administrator. “That’s just how Connells are. That’s why they ride you if you don’t have enough mortgage appointments.”
Lisa Webb, consumer law expert with Which? Magazine, reviewed Panorama’s evidence of how this sale was managed.
“This is absolutely something that should be against the law – and something that I think that these estate agents really ought to be investigated by the authorities for, because this should not be happening,” she told us.
The undercover reporter secretly filmed her boss – the senior branch manager – saying why she was so keen on the hot buyer. Not only would it mean collecting fees from the seller, the manager explained, but also commission from the in-house mortgage with conveyancing fees on top.
In addition, Connells would try to sell the hot buyer’s old house – and earn more fees.
The senior branch manager said the combined deal could, in total, be worth £10,000 to the company.
“That, in itself, is just appalling behaviour,” said Lisa Webb from Which? when we showed her the footage.
According to the 1979 Estate Agents Act it is classed as an “undesirable practice” for estate agents to discriminate against prospective buyers if they don’t take out a mortgage through in-house brokers.
If they do this, they can be investigated by Trading Standards. But it looks like the rules may not cover the sidelining of potential buyers as seen by Panorama’s undercover reporter.
Those rules need to be updated, according to financial journalist Iona Bain.
“There’s clearly a grey area here, whereby estate agents are able to accept one buyer that will use the in-house broker and turn everybody else away,” she told us.
Homeowner Julie, who has now packed up and left her house ahead of the sale going through, was horrified when we told her what had happened.
“I’m quite appalled really that… she [senior branch manager] has kind of taken options out of my hands and probably done me out of quite a bit of money, really.”
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Connells said it rejects “any accusation of conditional selling” and that “no harm has been caused” to the customer. There were other offers on Julie’s property, it told us, but the accepted offer was the highest.
“It is not the case that customers who use our mortgage services are more likely to successfully purchase a property than those who do not,” it added. It said that in the six-week period Panorama was undercover, only two properties out of 14 went to customers using the in-house mortgage service.
It also said it invests “significant time and resources in training our teams to ensure they understand the laws, regulations and guidelines within which they must operate”.
“Any employee found to be in breach of these standards faces strict disciplinary action, including dismissal,” Connells said.
The senior branch manager told Panorama she was content for Connells to respond on her behalf.
‘Overvaluing properties massively’
At Purplebricks, a whistleblower began secretly filming meetings because she says she became frustrated with how the company was being run.
Firstly on her phone, then with a camera provided by Panorama.
The biggest shock for the whistleblower was learning that staff were being incentivised to get price reductions on properties – many of which, she was told by one of the company’s local property agents, appeared to have been put on the market for more than they were worth.
“We are overvaluing properties massively just to gain instructions,” said the agent to the whistleblower in a private message.
Estate agents often use property valuations to attract customers – and subsequently dropping the asking price is not unusual. The estate agents’ code tells companies they “must never deliberately misrepresent the market value of a property”.
The whistleblower was also told in the same message from the agent that staff could earn commission if they persuaded sellers to drop their asking prices.
The same agent suggested to her that 18 price drops per month could earn staff £900 in commission.
In an online meeting, the whistleblower’s team leader told staff how to approach conversations with sellers about price drops.
He said, when properties go live, sellers can be told that if there aren’t many viewings or offers within the first four weeks then they should “have a conversation about [price] reduction”.
“So they won’t necessarily push the reduction there and then, but they will plant the seed,” he added.
Purplebricks told us it doesn’t overvalue properties and that while price reductions were once a target for rewarding staff, that was no longer the case. It said it doesn’t claim to be perfect and apologises wherever it has fallen short.
Purplebricks staff were also under pressure to sell financial products like mortgages and conveyancing, the whistleblower told us.
During the time she worked there, she said the company encouraged customers to get their conveyancing done through companies it had deals with, rather than look elsewhere.
“We don’t want them to get a quote for comparison because we are by far and away very expensive,” said her team leader during an online meeting.
When Ryan Evans and Olivia Phelps bought a two-bedroom house in Sutton-in-Ashfield through Purplebricks they ended up buying conveyancing services through the company.
They paid £2,820 last summer. Using price comparison websites, Panorama found that was nearly three times more than the current cheapest quote for the same property.
“We were none the wiser having never done all this before. I certainly felt like maybe they [Purplebricks] had taken advantage of us a bit because we were first-time buyers,” Ryan told us.
Like Connells, Purplebricks is also signed up to the Code of Practice for Residential Estate Agents which says: “You should provide a service to both buyers and sellers consistent with fairness, integrity and best practice.”
Our whistleblower also recorded her team leader firing-up staff to sell add-on products in addition to conveyancing.
“So let’s try and really squeeze every lead for as much as it’s got – and I want us to be a bit more relentless,” he told staff at one meeting. “The urgency is massive… there is still a heinous amount of money to be made.”
Anyone working in sales is encouraged to sell more, says Lisa Webb of Which?, but it is “a real issue” if an estate agent is “incentivising someone to make a very quick decision” or pressuring them “into making decisions too quickly… before they’ve had the option to shop around”.
Purplebricks said it entirely rejects any portrayal of its service as pressure-selling, adding that it does not promote hard-selling and that it focuses on the benefits, not price, when recommending services.
In a statement, it also said that since new owners took over in 2023, it has “worked hard to improve service and build a team and culture that puts customers first”.
The whistleblower’s team leader did not want to comment and told us he had left Purplebricks.
