To those selling in these difficult times Part Deux. AKA sellers support network!

monkeys_bunny

rosered100 wrote: »

Everyone here talks of rightmove - does anyone's EA use findaproperty.com??
Until we went on the market that was the only property website I used - had never heard of rightmove. If you are on it, you can see what houses people have looked at in the last 7 days that have also viewed your property. It gives quite a good insight & shows what the competition is as far as the buyers are concerned.

mine is on here, how can you tell what people have looked at?? do you have to register/log in?

rosered100

monkeys_bunny wrote: »

mine is on here, how can you tell what people have looked at?? do you have to register/log in?

Scroll to the bottom of the page , it says "In the last 7 days, other people that looked at this property also looked at these:" with the photos & details.

I fiddle mine;) If the other houses are much cheaper than mine, I click through to others in the area than are on for a higher price so that mine looks a bargain in comparison. It seems to work in changing the pictures the following day.

harz99

not_loaded wrote: »

Are you talking about agents like HouseNetwork, or portals like RightMove?

Should have explained myself better - portals, please.

sonastin

When I started looking for houses for sale Rightmove came top of the google search. I started my searches on there and then decided to look what else was out there. Findaproperty also came up, along with a few other sites, but I soon gave up on everything other than rightmove. Pretty much every EA in our area uses RM and I couldn't find anything on the other sites that I hadn't already seen.

When I got really serious about looking (i.e. when I first had a buyer), I drove around the area I am looking to move to keeping an eye out for EA boards for companies that I hadn't seen on RM. Turned out that those I hadn't seen before had nothing on their books in my search criteria so they wouldn't have come up on any RM searches.

But that just applies to the area I'm looking in. Other parts of the country operate in different ways...

partickz

sonastin wrote: »

When I started looking for houses for sale Rightmove came top of the google search. I started my searches on there and then decided to look what else was out there. Findaproperty also came up, along with a few other sites, but I soon gave up on everything other than rightmove. Pretty much every EA in our area uses RM and I couldn't find anything on the other sites that I hadn't already seen.

When I got really serious about looking (i.e. when I first had a buyer), I drove around the area I am looking to move to keeping an eye out for EA boards for companies that I hadn't seen on RM. Turned out that those I hadn't seen before had nothing on their books in my search criteria so they wouldn't have come up on any RM searches.

But that just applies to the area I'm looking in. Other parts of the country operate in different ways...

That is a good point. Every area is different and you have to know your local market. Go out for a drive/walk and see what is on the market and with which agent. This is the biggest purchase most of us will ever make.

harz99

sonastin wrote: »

When I started looking for houses for sale Rightmove came top of the google search. I started my searches on there and then decided to look what else was out there. Findaproperty also came up, along with a few other sites, but I soon gave up on everything other than rightmove. Pretty much every EA in our area uses RM and I couldn't find anything on the other sites that I hadn't already seen.

When I got really serious about looking (i.e. when I first had a buyer), I drove around the area I am looking to move to keeping an eye out for EA boards for companies that I hadn't seen on RM. Turned out that those I hadn't seen before had nothing on their books in my search criteria so they wouldn't have come up on any RM searches.

But that just applies to the area I'm looking in. Other parts of the country operate in different ways...

That illustrates very well the dilemma that sellers find themselves in - do you go with an agent that has loads of other similar properties for sale and use every trick available to push yours to the top of the list; or do you go with an agent with few of your type/price etc. in the hope that your property being one of the few will get more attention?

The motor trade, banks, retail giants all seem to favour the first approach.

(Obviously in Scotland it would be the area Solictors Property Centre versus the other local solictor or group).

beccad

We've just completed on the sale of our flat with House Network. It all went as well as can be expected, rather slowly (13 weeks) given that we had no chain and her was a FTB. This was mainly down to HN's solicitors (used by our buyer, not us) not doing anything for five weeks after they were appointed.

We found it incredibly difficult to get hold of our account manager. Really, really rare that you'd get to speak to them straight away when you called. Most of the time a message was taken and they'd call you back at some unspecified point.

However, we had four viewings and three offers in two weeks, but I'm inclined to think that was to do with our flat and the state of the London housing market rather than anything HN did. They put us on Rightmove, but that's all they do to generate business - they don't have a list of people looking for property who they chase and market your property to. They rely on internet traffic and people coming to them. You show people around your property yourself.

I know I sound negative about them - overall it's been a good experience really. We sold our flat and paid a fraction to HN of what we'd have paid to a traditional agent. But you do get what you pay for! If I thought our flat was in any way going to be difficult to sell, I wouldn't have gone with them.

NyimaR

harz99 wrote: »

Thanks for that; can I ask how you know this?

A combination of obsessively watching RM for the last 3 months as well as getting email updates sent to me , and using property bee.

NEH

harz99 wrote: »

That illustrates very well the dilemma that sellers find themselves in - do you go with an agent that has loads of other similar properties for sale and use every trick available to push yours to the top of the list; or do you go with an agent with few of your type/price etc. in the hope that your property being one of the few will get more attention?

The motor trade, banks, retail giants all seem to favour the first approach.

(Obviously in Scotland it would be the area Solictors Property Centre versus the other local solictor or group).

In the areas I have lived most of the Solicitors are on the property centre sites, if they didn't they wouldn't get much of a look in...I'ts only really the borders and Glasgow and Edinburgh that don't really use Solicitor's Property Centres...

Chiaroscuro

sonastin wrote: »

When I started looking for houses for sale Rightmove came top of the google search. I started my searches on there and then decided to look what else was out there. Findaproperty also came up, along with a few other sites, but I soon gave up on everything other than rightmove. Pretty much every EA in our area uses RM and I couldn't find anything on the other sites that I hadn't already seen.

When I got really serious about looking (i.e. when I first had a buyer), I drove around the area I am looking to move to keeping an eye out for EA boards for companies that I hadn't seen on RM. Turned out that those I hadn't seen before had nothing on their books in my search criteria so they wouldn't have come up on any RM searches.

But that just applies to the area I'm looking in. Other parts of the country operate in different ways...

Some joker in our area has started uprooting for sale boards and chucking them in a nearby brook. Helpful.

Hope everyone is bearing up OK.

We're still waiting for feedback from the viewing we had on Tuesday. Thought they might be doing the 'first date' thing and making us wait three days but must admit to being a bit disappointed at not hearing anything before the weekend.