How relevant is the location of an estate agent office?

googler

Curlywurli wrote: »

I wouldn't be too concerned about where the actual shop is, more the opening hours. We went on a trip to see where we want to move to and the estate agent was shut. I suppose for the area it's normal but it was strange to us and we had wanted to get some info.

... and this was... a weekday? weekend? evening?

Curlywurli

googler wrote: »

... and this was... a weekday? weekend? evening?

Sunday lunchtime.

googler

Curlywurli wrote: »

Sunday lunchtime.

..and it 'seemed strange' to you that they were closed?

Curlywurli

googler wrote: »

..and it 'seemed strange' to you that they were closed?

Yes, for two reasons. 1. We are used to some Estate agents being open for a period of time on a Sunday. 2. A lot of the shops in the place that we were visiting were open.

isisini

As a buyer, our experience of online estate agents has not been great. We recently had a sale fall through because the surveyor undervalued the property - we have to take some responsibility for this as I think we got carried away by how much we liked the flat. However, we did feel using an online EA didn't help us or the seller - they had no relationship with local surveyors, and we suspected they they didn't have the local knowledge to convince the vendor to come down in price, or indeed not to set it so high in the first place.

The flat is still on the market several months later (in an otherwise buoyant area - N London), and they haven't refreshed it on rightmove or anything. I'd say a good local EA is probably worth the damage, while we started off using online sources (and still look at these), we have since struck up relationships with local agents and trust them to show us places we will probably be interested in. And conversely there are EAs who we won't deal with because they have dodgy reputations e.g. only putting through offers to the seller if people use their favoured solicitors etc.

isisini

The other thing we found is that we always spoke to a different person at the online EA, which was ripe for miscommunication. So a fairly innocuous query like 'do you think the vendor would be keen to complete quickly as we'd like to get an idea of timings so we can plan our rental exit' would become a request in writing like 'the buyer requests that completion happens with four weeks' which would be very scary for the seller.

Richard_Webster

Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Webster

Don't use an online agent that isn't local as they simply will have not a clue about your area and can easily make massive valuation bloomers. What follow up and sales chasing service will they provide?

The agent has to be local enough to know your area fairly well. It used to be critical to be where the other local agents were so that people would find your office when they were doing a trawl around local agents for property in a particular area. That isn't so important now because most people do their initial searches for property on-line.

This is, of course, nonsense. I am sure you have a clue about what your property is worth and local agents will give you a free valuation. You will save a lot of money with an online agent if you don't mind doing your own viewings. You also avoid the game playing in which some high street agents engage.

OK you may be able to get a valuation by talking initially to local agents. However unless you are experienced in the business you can still be caught with time wasting buyers who can't proceed. Do you know what to ask buyers about their proceedability?

Hoof_Hearted

Hmmm....£219 up front or £2,800 on completion. That's one hell of a tough decision.....

googler

Hoof_Hearted wrote: »

Hmmm....£219 up front or £2,800 on completion. That's one hell of a tough decision.....

Someone else posted in a similar recent thread that he wouldn't normally find himself praising agents, but at the end of the day, his local guy got him and one of his relatives something like £5000 more on each of their properties than he reckoned he would get.

Given the example above, that would leave the OP some £2200 better off at the end of the day.....

cwcw

Richard_Webster wrote: »

OK you may be able to get a valuation by talking initially to local agents. However unless you are experienced in the business you can still be caught with time wasting buyers who can't proceed. Do you know what to ask buyers about their proceedability?

What about..... "what's your position?"

We used a local high street agent and still had more than our fair share of unproceedable time wasters.

Having said that, they only charged 1%, and we paid nothing until the sale went through at just 1.5% under the full, original asking price, so can't complain really.