Great sales pitch locks you in, doesn't deliver, huge bill
Bomae won us over with their sales pitch. But they will not work with you until you sign a contract, locking you into paying them a 24.990kr fee regardless of whether you end up purchasing a house or not. Our final bill was 41.985kr & that's after 6.500kr discounts we managed to get. Compare this to the around 18.000kr we would have spent if we had gone with one of the other agents we spoke with, you would expect to get amazing service.
Here are some of the issues we had:
*Slow communication: We often found that emails would go unanswered by 1-2 days, which is a long time when attempting to buy a house.
*Lacking advice: Having already found the house we wanted their service of finding a property was not needed. The agent needed only to review the property, asses the price level, talk with the estate agent, review contract of sale & "a lot more". But we paid 7.495kr for those tasks, none of which I feel were delivered. The conversation about price level seemed to be "but what do you feel like you are willing to pay?" rather than giving me an educated assesment. In terms of dialogue with the estate agent, I found myself often talking to the estate agent who was worried that they hadn't heard from the advisor.
As for reviewing the contract of sale I raised concerns about it to which the advisor replied that I should just sign it & the lawyer can retroactively deal with any issues. I'm still not sure what that 7.495kr got us.
*Basic financial advice: The financial aspect of Bomae was one of the reasons we chose them. We were very thankful for the time & advice of our financial advisor. But it did not live up to the +12.000kr fee. In our case we got a few rejections based on my residency status (even though I have lived in Denmark 5+ years & our economy was good). Bomae presented 2 offers, 1 from a bank that initially rejected us & only looked at the case again after I pressured the bank. The 2nd was from a bank contact which was given to us by a buyers agent we didn't end up choosing.
Bomae’s contracts said they would obtain 3 offers, we got only 2 & only because of my intervention. After the rejections from their usual bank contacts, it seemed Bomae were stuck & were not proactive in reaching out to other banks.
The budget we were given was very rough & high level. It also showed Ejerskifteforsikring on the very lower end - that lower end only being quoted by one company, a company Bomae's lawyer advised us not to use. So in the end the costs in purchasing the house were at least 20.000kr more than the budget we were provided.
For the Ejerskifteforsikring the advisor also told us the owners of the house would pay 50% of the value of the lowest offer in the Refusionsopgørelse. The financial advisor neglected to tell us that in a Refusionsopgørelse any tax the owners have paid on the house is charged to us as buyers, basically meaning the Refusionsopgørelse is not us getting money, but us paying money. Despite telling Bomae we were first home buyers, Danish is not my first language & we wanted guidance & advice on everything; this important detail about the Refusionsopgørelse was never mentioned.
*The bill: Bomae’s sales pitch said that they almost always are able to negotiate their fee into the home loan. After it became clear that our bank offer would not include Bomae's fee, I reached out to our advisor asking them to confirm when specifically we would receive the bill & what the payment terms would be. The agreement with Bomae states you are billed when the transaction is final. I received a vague response that we will be charged when the deal is approved, not final, (no date given, nor a specific frame for when the deal is considered approved) & "I can see that our fee has been put into the cost of the bankloan. So the invoice will be sent further to the bank". I replied advising that is not what the financial advisor had told us, I never got a reply.
Surprise (not really) the invoice was sent to us directly. We received it 2 weeks after we had the keys for the house, 1 month before our official takeover & 2 months before the Refusionsopgørelse. Having not been prepared to receive it at that time, receiving an invoice for over 40.000kr with a payment term of just 3 days was quite stressful. The invoice hadn't included the discounts which were agreed upon so we got a new invoice the next day, with an 8 days payment term.
*Summary: In our case, they simply did not deliver a service that warrants a bill over 40.000kr. For that price I would not expect to spend as much time as I did chasing banks myself, talking to the real estate agent, or following up with Bomae. I expected a much more thorough & accurate budget. The reduction we got on the purchase price was something I believe any other company would have achieved & our bank offers were not more favourable than if we had approached the banks ourselves.
2 November 2020
Unprompted review