“NEVER AGAIN. Really dissapointed with Yopa and its South East London agent Hannah McDuffus. I was buying a house via Yopa. I informed the vendor about every step of the buying process I was on via the Yopa online messages. When I got a mortgage offer and paid for searches, solicitor's work has been almost done, and we could complete in 1 month, the vendor changes their mind without informing me. Very poor communication from the agent, never answers phone calls, ignores messages and requires updates in impolite manner. The agent hasn't informed me about vendor changing their mind till the very last minute. I suspect a vendor got another offer elsewhere and the agent never mentioned it to me. Could have asked me to match it. Arrogant attitude, unprofessional service and poor communication. I would never use Yopa again.”
“DO NOT USE AS A BUYER.
Bought a flat through Yopa and they were horrendous. As soon as the offer went in and was accepted. No communication. Estate agent not answering calls or texts. Emails ignored. Absolutely useless. Would avoid at all costs!! My solicitor advised me at the beginning how difficult Yopa are! Should have listened !! AVOID AVOID AVOID !!!”
“Yopa are a terrible company I'm currently trying to buy a house through the company it's been 11 months the agent Tracy Chaplin does not answer her phone or respond to any messages left on the answering machine as to why the probate is taking so long and what is happening. The general call center are unable to help and give me email address to send questions to which I don't get replies.
0 stars.”
“Won’t let me sign up. So can’t get any info on the flat from the owners as yopa don’t have any info specific to the property - like how long the lease is on the flat! Come on, what are they doing for their money - nothing. It’s simply an expensive listing service,”
“Found a beautiful house to buy after, which just happened to be being sold through YOPA. After we agreed the initial sale, the communication between our solicitors and YOPA (the sellers solicitors) became more and more difficult, and eventually impossible to contact. Luckily, we have been in direct contact with the seller, who is experiencing the same issues as our solicitors. He has received no responses from Yopa, and days and days go by, without receiving any communication back from them. Urgent requests sent from our solicitors a few weeks back, as we are now homeless (as per agreeing a March completion - we moved out of rental) and the seller has still not received any contract (we signed ours 3 weeks ago!) We are now 5 weeks past the date we were supposed to complete and have no idea when they might decide to respond or get this sale through. Really scary experience which takes all of the pleasure out of buying your first home. This company does not care about anyone - DO NOT USE.”
“After being on hold for ages, I tried to get some information on a property but the guy on the phone was only interested in booking a viewing for me and didn't know anything about the property. I asked for a local no. to call but he said the local agent didn't have a phone, only an email address. What estate agent doesn't have a phone!
No reply to my email! Do these people want to sell houses?!”
“Having tried to book a viewing of a house that came back on the market today, I’m glad I never went to them for my sale. Ages on the phone waiting so I gave up, tried a mobile for the local area, no joy. Mailed them and got an automatic reply saying I could book, so no I completed the form, tried to submit it and it wouldn’t, or if it did I don’t know. I have given up and will just keep looking elsewhere.”
“Amateur, inefficient, rude and incompetent! I attempted to buy a Mews House with Yopa for my daughter, and was assured she could have her cat there with her. They told me it was Freehold. They failed to mention it was a managed Freehold. When I realised this I ask numerous times to speak to the director of the management company. At first they promised to get the contact details and then didn't. Then they stopped responding to me. My daughter spoke to one of the agents who was rude and dismissive towards her. I made a complaint and was ignored. Eventually, as I felt sure that Yopa were trying to keep something from me, I was able to track down the contact details myself. It turned out we would not be able to keep the cat there! The seller was in dispute with the management company and until such time as this was resolved the sale could not proceed anyway. Also the management company was in dispute with ALL of the other owners on the estate. Not a happy place to live. But Yopa said it would not be reasonable for them to know about any of this. They just happened to make it as difficult as possible to find out. They was my solicitor's job to find out these unhappy details! Really....? they don't think that they need to know that the place is unsellable! That I would need to employ a solicitor to find about if we can keep a cat on the premises! So what DO they actually know? What DO they actually DO if they can't even give customers details of how to contact a management company? What DO they DO if they don't answer emails or respond to complaint? Completely unprofessional and how they get as many positive reviews on Trust Pilot is beyond me. This website appears to present far more reviews that reflect my experience. I had no option other than to withdraw my offer and lose a lot of money on legal fees completely unnecessarily. My daughter was devastated to be told that she had to chose between the house and her cat at an advanced stage in the process.
Seriously sellers...... if you pay peanuts think about what and your prospective buyer are likely to get....”
“Shocking service, please dont use. Removed our property from them and relisted with another agent, who sold it in 2 weeks, pay more and go with a high street agent”
“Just to say DO NOT USE YOPA / South West if you want to sell your property.
Stuart Randall's the salesperson is a LIAR and Richard Vickery area manager is a BULLY.
Not worth the money or the hassle, use a local estate agent.”
“1.Over estimated value of property.
2. Wrong write up for advert clearly copied and pasted.
3. Lack of communication
4.Lack of transparency.
Compounding estate agents bad reputation.
Slippery %$*^#^.
My a#$e is sore from this Yopa ordeal. Yes we have saved money by taking the no sale no fee option that was a lucky escape if you ask me.”
“Very poor service. First to view a property they were selling. Made an offer, and told the representative we would pay the full asking price if necessary. This happened on a Saturday afternoon, Monday received a txt, not to give us an answer regarding the offer made by ourselves. The txt was to let us know they had sold it to another party who were prepared to buy without searches and could complete within 28 days.
Disgusted in the treatment received. Beware,these people have not a shred of morality.”
“I made the mistake of choosing to sell my house through YOPA after reading the glowing 5-star reviews that I read on Trustpilot.
I have had a very bad experience with YOPA over an 18-month period and I wondered if I was alone, after all, everyone else seemed to have a great experience which did not match mine. Then I read reviews on other sites and found that I was very far from alone. YOPA are terrible.
The trouble began early. We accepted an asking-price offer after only a week on the market. All seemed well but our local agent suddenly disappeared after a few weeks. There was no explanation and no local replacement, our sale was now being handled by someone 200 miles away. No-one followed up our buyers and eventually, after spending the summer off the market “sold subject to contract” we contacted our buyers and found out that they didn’t have the money and had never been in a position to buy in the first place. By this time it was late autumn, we had a local agent again but she has never even visited the house. On the two occasions that she could have conducted a viewing (we paid for unlimited accompanied viewings) she was “busy” and asked us to do the viewings ourselves.
The real trouble started when we accepted our agent’s advice to enter our property for a YOPA Online auction. Their auction partners made a terrible mess of the process, even including the legal documents for a completely different property in the auction pack. We decided to end the auction at the earliest possible opportunity and gave notice to do so. When we finally sold the house, after the auction had ended, we were faced with a demand for £6300 from the auctioneers who had done nothing at all to facilitate the sale and who had no grounds for demanding the fee. It was outrageous but YOPA did nothing to help. After a very stressful 6-week ordeal, during which we nearly lost the sale, our buyers pointed out that YOPA had been in breach of GDPR law and the demand was finally dropped allowing our sale to be completed.
I have two pieces of advice.
Read reviews from different sites. There is something fishy about the way that reviews on Trustpilot always pick out a particular named person for special praise. Trustpilot’s guide to leaving reviews asks reviewers not to mention people by name. It is also odd that a negative review is quickly followed by several 5-star reviews which push the negative review off the bottom of the page.
Never, ever, under any circumstances accept an invitation to use YOPA online auctions.”
“As per below buyers, put an offer in then out of the blue, another buyer appears at the same time and they're asking for final offers like a bidding war. Whole transaction with this company has left an awful taste in our mouths. I'll avoid any yopa advertised properties in future.”
“I TOTALLY AGREE DONT USE IF YOU ARE A BUYER!!
Charlatans, unethical, dishonest, unprofessional,waste of time ,use their system seal a deal , waste all your weekend putting funds in place, setting the deal up with conveyancers etc only to be told , 17:10 the next day they want a bidding war, avoid these xxxxxxxx like the plague, I am 56 , bought boats ,planes ,houses ,hotels , and NEVER in all my dealings experienced anything even close to the horror of trying to purchase through these people!
Word is definatly NOT their bond DO NOT TRUST THEM OR A WORD THEY SAY , worst experience I ever had literally”
“WARNING DON'T USE IF YOU ARE A BUYER.
The only good thing about using them is that signing up is very easy and sending any details which they need too is very easy too. The estate agent Simon whom showed us around the house we want to buy was pleasant enough to start off with.
About 3 days or so after putting in our offer though he called like once a week asking how we were getting on and trying to push us along with the whole process. They also called our advisors too and tried to hurry them along with it all as well. Simon also said that the sellers lawyers hadn't heard from our lawyers which was totally untrue! I understand that this is his job but as first time buyers it is incredibly stressful. Filling out forms and actually getting mortgage does actually take time. The whole process takes a couple of months on average not a couple of weeks like they seem to think it should. Not everyone has thousands of pounds ready to go and a Mortgage offer with a click of their fingers. We and our advisors also kept/keep being told and messaged that the buyers want to pull out of the sale "because it is taking too long" or put the house back on the market because its "taking too long." We and our advisors have said multiple times that everything is in hand. They only put the house on the market back in May 2020 so its not like the house has been on forever and we made the offer back at the end of July. Recievening messages and calls like this is highly unprofessional in my opinion. It has also caused a lot of extra stress on us which we could do without right now. I would avoid using them as a buyer and wish the sellers had a different estate agent. The harassment is unreal. YOPA word of advice don't promise your sellers a quick sale and stop harassing the buyers its very off putting.”
