Making a speculative enquiry about price of your home to an estate agent?

ChrisJones1

Hi all,

Is it a good idea to make a speculative enquiry about price of your home to an estate agent?

I normally look at the price of homes sold recently in my street through Zoopla as a guestimate but always wondered how an estate agent values it.

What do you think?

[Deleted User]

Sure, who not?

ST1991

Yes... but do you want to sale or is it purely just for your own need to know?

It is probably seen as wasting time if you have no intention to sell... but people do that all the time.
Prepare for a hard-sale from them, and also have some answers ready as to why you aren't getting back to them/ 'getting quotes from a few estate agents', 'need to find another house first before i market', 'not sure what it is currently worth, but if enough i want to sale'...

AlexMac

reasonable if your house is similar to others locally and easy to price... but if not....
...when we last sold 5 years ago, there was a 14% difference between the lowest and the highest of 3 local quotes from agents, none of whom minded valuing- and we sold just under the latter

ChrisJones1

I am not looking to sell it's just for curiosity.

What if I contact the agent from which I originally bought the property?

hazyjo

If it's just for curiosity, unless you've done a tonne of stuff to it, you'll be just as good comparing against local sales of similar properties.


I'm selling this year, but always get local alerts on RM so I can see what the market's doing. tbh, I will get 3 round to value (and prob sell with an online agent), but I'm just as happy valuing it myself after all the research I've done over the last decade or more lol!


Jx

davidmcn

ChrisJones1 wrote: »

I am not looking to sell it's just for curiosity.

What if I contact the agent from which I originally bought the property?

Bear in mind they might have better things to do with their time than satisfy your curiosity.

iantojones40

ChrisJones1 wrote: »

I am not looking to sell it's just for curiosity.

What if I contact the agent from which I originally bought the property?

Sounds like someones planning a dinner party soon.

Davesnave

It depends on local circumstances. If your property is like loads of others it's probably not worth bothering an agent for an assessment which won't necessarily be more accurate than Rightmove sold prices, and soon outdated.

OTOH, if your property is a one-off then it might be an OK thing to do.

Here in Ruralshire, we waited till the dead zone of the summer holidays before getting the manager of a local agency in to advise us on the likely ceiling price if we renovated. He called the manager of another branch and the pair made a Friday afternoon of it, only leaving when the chocolate biscuits ran out.

I appreciate things are different elsewhere! :rotfl:

glasgowdan

No problems whatsoever asking agents to come out to value. You may well sell in the near future whether or not you're planning to. Early sales visits are a totally normal part of their job.

You can easily say to them you're looking for a valuation to see if you can afford to move to the house you want, and once they've been and call you back the next day just say you're getting another 1-2 agents to visit for comparison and will get back to them either way.

forum_posts

iantojones40 wrote: »

Sounds like someones planning a dinner party soon.

I wonder if the guests will put their car keys in a bowl?