Estate agent information

morrisy

Hello

I am about to start the process of selling a close relative's house (she has recently died). I do not know the area at all well, and there seems to be loads of estate agents around. Is there a way of finding out which are the best estate agents ie are there any published reports which rank agents according to the number of sales the make per year?

Thanks

Doozergirl

I wish there was!

Why don't you tell us which area? There always seems to be someone with a local opinion here

david29dpo

i do sympathize with you. i am having six agents round on Wednesday to sell a house not local to me. other peoples recommendations are best,( thanks doozergirl!) but if not, try and get a feel for the agent and do some detective work on them. dont always go for the lowest fees either. the last place i sold i got £3000 more for £500 more in fees.

roger56

Established local independant estate agents are also well worth investigating.

tink1981_2

Might also be worth looking into which agent have a presence on the web particularly with sights like rightmove. I know when I was looking to buy last year I did a lot of my hunting through the web

Good luck with it all

tink

annie123

Speaking as an agent I would advise that you to speak to the local trading standards office. Ask if there is any agent that they get repeated complaints about and avoid them! TS may also live locally and be able to recommend a few agents to you. Get at least 3 in and ask them for comparable properties that they have sold. Many agent get often get stuck in price brackets cheaper/mid/high end properties etc, no good putting your property up for sale if the agents buyer base is mainly ftb and your selling a 5 bed family home , if you get my drift.
Read the contract DO NOT SIGN UP FOR 16 WEEKS as some agents will try to get, 4-6 weeks is enough, if you are happy with them then no prob, if not then you can try someone else. Good luck.

freebird65

Also.....use nethouseprices.com to get an idea of recent selling prices for that road. It's great to give you a ball-park figure so you have a clearer idea of how far out the agent's estimates are.

zkeithz

morrisy wrote:

Hello

I am about to start the process of selling a close relative's house (she has recently died). I do not know the area at all well, and there seems to be loads of estate agents around. Is there a way of finding out which are the best estate agents ie are there any published reports which rank agents according to the number of sales the make per year?

Thanks

If you don't know the area, try ononemap.co.uk, they are a free map property locator which gives asking prices and sold prices of properties. This might help you assess how much you might ask.

Also there are many property advertising websites, some of which are estate agents, others, like availablehouse .co.uk are completely free to use and you can post an advert instantly. Websites like that give wide publicity to property advertising, more than your local newspaper. Various publisshed statistics indicate that approximately 70% of houebuyers use the internat at some yime during their search