EA acting for both buyer and seller

rio

Has anyone any experience of having an Estate Agent who is selling your house plus the one you are interested in? Does this work to your advantage or not? We are in this position and our EA does not seem to be that bothered about pushing our property, mind you the one that we are considering has been up for sale for 5 months, needs lots of work and we seem to be the only people interested in it. Our EA has told us that there are 5 houses identical to our on the market but these all have refurbished bathrooms and that we will have difficulty selling because we have a coloured bathroom suite. We have priced ours 2k below the others to reflect the fact people might want to change the bathroom and we are open to realistic offers, so we don't think this should be too much of an issue.

silvercar

I've seen it work both ways. I know one EA who said to me that X wouldn't be getting a certain (popular) house because he had their sale in the bag so he could afford for them to wait around so he "directed" the sellers to go with a different buyer whose sale was dependant on moving quickly.

On the other hand another EA will push more for your purchase if he's got your sale as he has control of the chain so can check on progress easier.

It also depends if you are multi or single agency.

£2k with the hassle of replacing the bathroom... not sure if that would work for me. Also depends if the buyers have spare cash they can spend after a sale. If they can put the extra £2k on their mortgage they don't have to pay it out all at once.

rio

Thanks, it is a matter of personal taste though - in reality we are prepared to drop about 6k. As far as we are concerned when we buy a house we look for position, size of garden and potential. Everything else can be altered in our opinion. The house we are considering will take us about 5 years to get how we want, I could live with a coloured bathroom suite for a few years as long as it was clean and worked, perhaps some people can't - but that is up to them.

Dasnookster

I agree, position, size of garden, potential etc., is defo the most important to me - a coloured bathroom suite can be changed.

Something that may be worth considering is to buy a relatively cheap white bathroom suite and have it put in to help sell your house. You can pick up a relatively decent one from a DIY shop for a couple of hundred quid - then obviously you have to get it fitted, but it might be a viable option to make it more saleable.