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SmartMove Estate Agents - Bournemouth

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I am about to put my flat on the market with Smart move estate agents in Bournemouth.

I'm attracted by them because they charge two payments of £345+Vat (which I believe is two payments of 405.38 assuming VAT at 17.5%). The first is up front, and the second when the property sells.

I wondered if anyone has any experience of using these guys?

If it works, this could be a good moneysaving exercise, as £800 fees for an estate agent isn't bad at all. I guess the flip side is, if they're no good, I've paid £400 up front.

Thanks in advance for any help!
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Comments

  • Woby_Tide
    Woby_Tide Posts: 5,344 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    We sold via them last summer when they still only charged £345 all in. You do get what you pay for it has to be said, if you've a house that can get peopl ethrough the door on pictures then go for it, we ended up conducting most viewings ourselves and ended up doing the negotiations face to face with the eventual buyers during one of their viewings. The £345 basically paid for the advertising and fielding calls/making appointments for us. If you've a potentially difficult property then you'll have to rely on the oldfashioned blaggers.

    I did put some stuff in a thread back then but can't remember what else I thought of them, a search shoudl find it though
  • Thanks Woby...
  • ...bump...
  • fimonkey
    fimonkey Posts: 1,238 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 500 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    Scotty, I live in bournemouth and am a potential FTB, where's your flat, how many bedrooms, and what price are you looking for (PM me if you don't want this public)

    Cheers
  • scottytrotter
    scottytrotter Posts: 14 Forumite
    In case this is of use to anyone, I am so far distinctly unimpressed with Smartmove. I've been with them two weeks and they've only got me two viewings.

    If there is a reason I'm not getting viewings (price too high? photos no good? Something else?) they're not going out of their way to tell me. In fact, I get the strong impression that now they've got their up front fee, they aren't bothered at all.

    I'm all in favour of new approaches to estate agency, anything that reduces the silly prices they charge, but I am considering going to a "traditional" agent - as they may actually sell my flat!
  • Bun
    Bun Posts: 872 Forumite
    I too live in Bournemouth and although I haven't used them, I have noticed that they don't seem to shift property very quickly, their signs seem to be up for ages. A particular house in our road was online with no internal photos (although that may have been deliberate) and was described as being in completely the wrong area. This again could be bad proof reading by the vendor but of the agents I would choose this wouldn't be one of them. I would imagine as somebody else has said that with this system, having lots of people on their books with one payment in the bank is the most efficient way of making money.
    Annabeth Charlotte arrived on 7th February 2008, 2.5 weeks early :D
  • dnwilliams
    dnwilliams Posts: 84 Forumite
    It's not about selling houses, it's about getting them on, with this style of agency. Once its on the books & your money is in their account, they forget it and move on to the next one.
  • Woby_Tide
    Woby_Tide Posts: 5,344 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    have you a link to the property so people can look it over and say if they think the pictures or descriptions coule be better.

    I'm assuming it's on Rightmove, have you asked them if they will be putting it in the Property Paper in the coming weeks and also that they have sent out the details to those on their database. they seemed to take a while to do that with ours, the initial viewings were all generated on Rightmove, from memory they generated about 8 or so in teh first week but every property is different.

    Selling flats in Bournemouth is rapidly becoming ice to eskmos. Rightmove has 340 flats added in the least 2 weeks alone, anything you can do to make your place stand out form the crowd you need to do. Also have you doen the viewings so far or a smartmove agent?
  • Just as an update to this...

    I have now sold my flat - via Smartmove. However, I am convinced it was more through luck than any of their skill. They only got us 2 viewings in several weeks, and luckily one of them bought it.

    Throughout the process we had to chase them and chase them to get them to do anything. Even after we sold, all chasing and harrying to move the chain along was done either by ourselves, or the estate agents we were buying through (Palmer Snell). This experience with Palmer Snell has opened our eyes, made us realise that all ES are not the same!

    I really just wanted to leave this as a warning to people who might be considering methods of avoiding very high ES fees, that IN MY OPINION Smartmove are to be avoided.
  • Woby_Tide
    Woby_Tide Posts: 5,344 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    my experiences with Palmer Snell during our move were they liked to add 10% onto their selling prices ;)

    whilst we were with smartmove I did speak to other agents and they thought it was unworkable for the fees, I think the lack of staff may be proving this now and they are becoming a listing agent and thats about it
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