House buying agents any good?

Chocho

Hi all, I am a FTB and climbing the very steap learning curve of buying a property. In London! which makes it even harder. I am hoping that very soon I will be making offers and negotiating prices that scares me somewhat. I am not a good negotiator and dont have much experience in negotiating at all, while real estate agents do and are super agressive. The listed prices in London seem 10-20% inflated so negotiation will be needed. Do you think a buying agent may be able to help with the negotiation stage? I am ready to pay them a % of the saving but they wont be making dramatic amounts of cash from me as my budget is quite modest. Are there at all agents who work with the peoplel like me?

marksoton

You state you have a modest budget. You're in London.

I don't imagine any " agent" would help.

alchemist.1

i really cant see how an agent will help with a modest budget.

eddddy

Chocho wrote: »

I am not a good negotiator and dont have much experience in negotiating at all, while real estate agents do and are super agressive. The listed prices in London seem 10-20% inflated so negotiation will be needed.

I think you're kind of misunderstanding the process.

Agents don't accept/reject offers - they just pass them on to the seller.

Your buying agent can negotiate as much as you like with the seller's agent - your agent might even grind their agent into the ground - but that won't have any impact on the seller's decision making.

Estate agents typically try to negotiate you up to a price that the seller will accept.

In general terms, people just sell to whoever makes the highest offer. If properties are really overpriced by 10 to 20%, the highest offers will be at 80 to 90% of asking price.

MortgageMamma

If you are using a mortgage broker, a good one will negotiate for you once you have a decision in principle in place. If you want your hand holding during the process by someone mega confident in dealing with agents, who knows the area and an idea of property values and how hard to push an agent you will most likely need to pay for it, a London broker will typically charge you £500, but most don't mind adding it to the loan on completion if you can't afford it upfront.

If you decide to go the broker route don't be afraid to ask them how long they've been in the business and ensure they have access to all lenders not just a panel. Some will describe themselves as whole of market - if they do this ask if they have access to every single lender or just a panel representative of the whole of market. The term whole of market can be misleading.

eddddy

MortgageMamma wrote: »

If you are using a mortgage broker, a good one will negotiate for you once you have a decision in principle in place. ...

So how does that work?

As an example, let's say I have a flat for sale at £200k through an EA.

Your mortgage broker can negotiate all day with my EA before offering £170k on your behalf. But the EA can't accept the offer. The EA will inform me of the offer - and I will decide whether to accept or reject it.

How is that better than you just sending an email to the EA offering the £170k?