Buying - Is it worth registering with estate agents?

Hoploz

I think your position is key. If you are just casually looking, viewing now and again when something catches your eye, and your house isn't on the market yet, they won't bother contacting you immediately.

But if you are under offer and desperately trying to find something, in my experience they are all over you.

But beware being the first through the door! In many cases the houses I got advance viewings on either never came to market properly (seller changed mind and decided not to sell) or else they showed them to us at x price and when they hit Rightmove aweek later they were x-50k! So they had used the early doors viewers to test the market price.

Gonzo1987

car0line123 wrote: »

It won't hurt you to register, but be prepared to be pestered about the properties they can't manage to sell.

Local agents here (South East) never bothered sending me details about properties early, I always called them first - the minute I saw details on rightmove (and I mean the minute!). It just save me time when booking a viewing, as I was already in their system (even if at a much lower price range )

If you're registered for a lower price bracket that would be why the properties aren't getting sent to you.....

GolfFoxtrot

Best advice I can offer is to buy (or use an old phone) a burner phone with a PAYG sim, this way the estate agents call you on this specific phone, when you're done looking you won't be getting calls from them anymore

car0line123

Gonzo1987 wrote: »

If you're registered for a lower price bracket that would be why the properties aren't getting sent to you.....

I wasn't clear, I didn't receive ANY property detail whatsoever (or the odd place that hadn't sold for months), whilst the price range I registered with was more than enough to buy the kind of property we were looking for.

I didn't want to be flooded with details of luxury home I can't afford, or to be pushed to spend other the top on a house because the EA knows I can easily afford it. For ex, if you register for £400k, and made an offer for £340 on a house marketed at £350, you have no chance of your offer being accepted!

Anyway, my point was the local EA didn't bother contacted me at all, got everything from Rightmove

Mickygg

GolfFoxtrot wrote: »

Best advice I can offer is to buy (or use an old phone) a burner phone with a PAYG sim, this way the estate agents call you on this specific phone, when you're done looking you won't be getting calls from them anymore

Or out of courtesy just tell the EAs you are no longer looking!

Snakey

Depends on the area. I bought in W2 and decent places in the right price range are like hen's teeth around here and there's vigorous competition from BTL landlords. I used to physically go round all of the estate agents every couple of weekends (or during the week if I was working from home, so as not to get in their way on their busiest days) - if they weren't busy I'd chat to them for a few minutes, ask if they'd got any new instructions in the pipeline, ask for their experience of certain buildings/streets etc.

By the end of it, they all knew me and there was no chance that they wouldn't think of me if they had word of a new property. I also learned so much about the area that I hadn't known despite having lived here for 15 years. It was really useful in the end as the seller of the flat I eventually bought had some "previous" with one of the other agents and so I was made well aware by that EA of all possible issues at a very early stage.

If I was in some place where there were 20-30 suitable properties on the market at any one time and things didn't move very fast, I'd have taken a different (and much slower) approach.

goodwithsaving

car0line123 wrote: »

I always called them first - the minute I saw details on rightmove (and I mean the minute!)

This was us too. Sorted a viewing within 5 minutes of the onthemarket notification and the next day we were arranging a mortgage. Just have to be very quick. They hadn't sent us the details through so it was pure luck.

Rizla300

I would concur with goodwithsaving and Snakey. We were looking in the Croydon are and registered with several of the main estate agents and although we got emails nothing beats calling them or even going around to the estate agents.

I would also consider local estate agents and independent ones. The house we have put an offer on was through a local independent estate agent. The level of service from a good independent estate agent doesn't compare to a chain.

However like goodwithsaving we actually found the property through RightMove. I signed up for instant alerts and phoned the estate agents as soon as I got the email alert. I had a viewing booked within 15mins of the email alert.

To get the best of RightMove save your searches so that inbetween email alerts you can still check your searches online.

The downside in just relying on the estate agent is that they will push property to you that is not in your criteria. RightMove enables you to filter properties more easily however like Kirsty on Location,Location,Location says 'don't discount a property just from what you see online'. Nothing beats viewing a house in person.