How to find the right house

awdaad

I am currently housing hunting by visiting the local estate agents BUT mainly looking the rightmove web site. Is this the wrong strategy? Someone was telling me that good property never make to the "web site" as they get snatched quickly from the agency!

Is relying on the web sites, like the rightmove, a futile exercise?

I am looking for 4 bedrooms and 2 receptions house.

All advice is welcomed

marcais

It's good to have establish contact with the estate agents as well. If they know what you're after they may well give you a call when something comes into them before it makes it through the system onto the website.

I have a friend who got the estate agents in for a valuation in the morning, gave them the go ahead to sell, had his first viewing that afternoon and got a call first thing the next day to say that they would go £1k over his asking price if he accepted straight away.

The estate agents didn't even have time to get a photo of the house and it was sold.

Debras_Angel

Hi Awdaad,

Welcome to the site.

When I was buying and selling I only used rightmove as it is the most viewed site. The original EA I went with wasn't on rightmove so i swapped quickly and got more viewings through it.

Most people nowadays will go to this website before setting foot in an EA to find a house.

It only takes a maximum of 24 hours to get your house listed on rightmove.

The more exposure the propery gets the quicker the sale.

So good luck and you can register to get house criteria sent to you via email, I think.

Debs

madfrenchgirl

well rightmove is a good starting point... if you establish good contacts with the EA then they will find something for you and call you even before the property makes it to rightmove!

Even if you see something on rightmove that you are not too sure about, contact the agent, they will come out with something. I phoned an EA about a house I knew was not too good (my best friend lives next door, so knew what to expect for the layout, etc), but the EA got us to visit it and a few others more that just came on the market and thi si how we found our house! If I had thought "no need to contact anyone for visiting that house cos I know I am not interested", we would have missed our house/

it might also be worth phoning every EA in the area you are looking to buy in though. Networking works best...

robwend

i think it depends on whats important to you, alot of people want pretty houses and so rightmove offers you that chance to go oooohhhh at the pic, but if size and style is more important internal pics dont always do justice

safesound

I found my house on the EA website the first day it was up. No other veiwers saw it as I viewed the following day and made an offer there and then. They didnt even have a chance to take any internal photos or put up a 'for sale' board.
The way I did it was to have a list of EA websites that cover the areas I was interested in and then I studied it every day short listing properties that fulfilled my criteria (min 2 bed, pref 2 recpt, med/large garden, off road parking, under 100K) Try and be flexible with your criteria and if you see a property that you like the look of but doesnt fit exactly, go see it anyway. This house has a much smaller garden than I originally wanted but the house itself more than makes up for it.
just my 2 pence
sharon

silvercar

My house was sold before the details sheet was written, let alone details put on any website, the same for the house I hope to buy. I have viewed three houses before they have hit the market, all from establishing a good relationship with the EA. All STC of course.

awdaad

Thank you all very much for your helpful replies.

That was very useful.

royalsteve

marcais wrote:

It's good to have establish contact with the estate agents as well. If they know what you're after they may well give you a call when something comes into them before it makes it through the system onto the website.

I have a friend who got the estate agents in for a valuation in the morning, gave them the go ahead to sell, had his first viewing that afternoon and got a call first thing the next day to say that they would go £1k over his asking price if he accepted straight away.

The estate agents didn't even have time to get a photo of the house and it was sold.

hmmm...estate agents are a waste of space.....totally incompetent......I bought my house after negotiating with the vendor directly.....the estate agent was last to know!

Now im looking to move aqgain......they arent even capable of sending details to me or even calling me when they have something for sale.

Cristy

LOL, I did it backwards! I wanted my house to appear "just so" so I forbade the estate agents from actively marketing the property until the photos were taken (to my satisfaction). The house was on rightmove within a few hours of us approving the particulars and we got some viewings off that, but ultimately what sold the house was the for sale board. We live on a central road in our town so quite a few people saw it and were interested, including our buyer.

From a buyer's perspective, we had a 2-pronges strategy. I checked rightmove constantly (obsessively!) and I was also in touch with the EAs, constantly stressing our proceedable position (we were in quite a hurry by then). Funnily enough the details of the house we're buying were sent to us by post and we rejected it, then had a really good look at the details on rightmove and thought maybe it was what we were looking for! And it was