Short Term Use of a High Street EA?

Doozergirl

not_loaded wrote: »

A previous viewer list is no problem, and 1% was what I was thinking. Your agent ‘confident in 4 weeks’ is great, but I need a BS detector really. I find it hard to believe that buyers ‘queue up’ at an agent without looking at Rightmove. What I’m being told is that a lot of buyers never look on the internet. Mmm…

Dictating your terms is the BS detector. If they are that confident that they have people queueing up then they will jump at 1%; as 1% for little work is a job well done for them.

The reality is that no agent has 'buyers' which are exclusive to them - they will be shopping elsewhere as well.

not_loaded

marcg wrote: »

I doubt if any agent has loads of buyers. More importantly, I doubt if any agent has loads of houses to sell - which is the real motivation for getting you to move to them. However, if they are that desperate, you can gain advantage in terms of fees and exposure.

Yes, logically an extension of what I’m being told is that they have loads of buyers who also don’t use the internet for their property search.

Not only that, but 4-bed spacious houses are in short supply here. If I was looking for one I’d have as many irons in the fire as possible.

marcg wrote: »

1. Check the T&Cs as others have said to make sure you can make a clean break with the current EA.
2. Interview all these 'fantastic' high street EAs to find out
a) what they think your house is worth - if their expectations are different to yours then this will be reflected in the comments they make at viewings. Also will give you a general market rate (which you are free to ignore).
b) their fees
c) how much coverage they will guarantee your house in the local papers
d) how their company operates in terms of process to completion
e) what you think of them as people in terms of presentation and manner
When you decide on one, get it all in writing.
We did this on our last sale, got 4 weeks 1/4 page ads, our house on 4 A4 ads in their window, 0.5% fees all with the local high street office. Oh, and 6 weeks to sell it or we went to the slightly bigger company offering to match it…

All good points thanks.

Doozergirl wrote: »

Dictating your terms is the BS detector. If they are that confident that they have people queueing up then they will jump at 1%; as 1% for little work is a job well done for them…

Yes from what you’ve said already that would seem to be the case. Thanks.

Interestingly the main pestering agent has just today put a house on the market very close to ours. It’s smaller, badly extended, with less good points, asking £20,000 more than ours. Their only score over us is a bigger garden. If they sell that, I think I should probably put my asking price up!

Thanks everyone for taking the time on your interesting posts.