Are my estate agents doing enough?

onejontwo

I suppose it depends which side of the fence you're sitting on, but as I haven't sold a property for years and the markets very different at the moment, I would like an EA's opinion if possible. In a nutshell we put our property on the market last Wednesday, had six viewers by Friday and four offers on Saturday. As we advertised it as offers over and similar properties attracted up to £17k over the asking price we were hoping for something similar as we had very good feed back. However the highest offer was £6k over the asking price. We are quite pleased with this but felt that there were many more interested parties and hopefully more offers. On contacting the EA. they said that six viewings were enough and we should accept one of their offers as they were not doing any more viewings. Now is this normal practice from the EA. or am I being unreasonable by asking for one more set of viewings? Any help appreciated.

Jenniefour

It's possible the EA's are not doing any more viewings because they've had no further interest - no-one to show around. 

canaldumidi

It's entirely up to you. You employ the EA so they do what you say.

You want more viewings? Tell them to continue marketing and conducting viewings.

You want to pin down a buyer fast? Ask the EA to give you full details of each offer, choose one, and accept it.

Simple.

(but less than a week on the market, and 4 offers suggests there is strong demand for your property.....)

Ath_Wat

Presumably your asking price was influenced by the fact that other properties had had offers of 17K over whatever their asking price was, and was set higher in the first place.

That said I don't know if them refusing to do any more viewings would leave them in breach of contract, but have you offered to conduct the viewings yourself?  

Ath_Wat

canaldumidi said:

It's entirely up to you. You employ the EA so they do what you say.

You want more viewings? Tell them to continue marketing and conducting viewings.

You want to pin down a buyer fast? Ask the EA to give you full details of each offer, choose one, and accept it.

Simple.

(but less than a week on the market, and 4 offers suggests there is strong demand for your property.....)

You can do the first part of that, but I am not sure all estate agent contracts would entail them having do conduct as many viewings as the vendor requires, so long as they refer any interest to the vendor and let them make their own arrangements.

onejontwo

Ath_Wat said:

Presumably your asking price was influenced by the fact that other properties had had offers of 17K over whatever their asking price was, and was set higher in the first place.

That said I don't know if them refusing to do any more viewings would leave them in breach of contract, but have you offered to conduct the viewings yourself?  

Good point. We wouldn't be phased by doing the viewings ourselves but we get the feeling that the EA feels that they have done enough work by getting six viewings. Bit I'll put that to them if they will take the block off new viewings.

canaldumidi

Ath_Wat said:

canaldumidi said:

It's entirely up to you. You employ the EA so they do what you say.

You want more viewings? Tell them to continue marketing and conducting viewings.

You want to pin down a buyer fast? Ask the EA to give you full details of each offer, choose one, and accept it.

Simple.

(but less than a week on the market, and 4 offers suggests there is strong demand for your property.....)

You can do the first part of that, but I am not sure all estate agent contracts would entail them having do conduct as many viewings as the vendor requires, so long as they refer any interest to the vendor and let them make their own arrangements.

It's been a (long) while since I signed a contract with an EA, but my guess is that they are not that detailed. I suspect they agree to 'market' and they agree to 'conduct viewings'. Does the contract specify how many.....?

Since the decision of when to sell is the owner's, until the owner accepts an offer the contract with the EA remains in place.

But please, someone who's got a recent contract, feel free to contradict me.

Ath_Wat

canaldumidi said:

Ath_Wat said:

canaldumidi said:

It's entirely up to you. You employ the EA so they do what you say.

You want more viewings? Tell them to continue marketing and conducting viewings.

You want to pin down a buyer fast? Ask the EA to give you full details of each offer, choose one, and accept it.

Simple.

(but less than a week on the market, and 4 offers suggests there is strong demand for your property.....)

You can do the first part of that, but I am not sure all estate agent contracts would entail them having do conduct as many viewings as the vendor requires, so long as they refer any interest to the vendor and let them make their own arrangements.

It's been a (long) while since I signed a contract with an EA, but my guess is that they are not that detailed. I suspect they agree to 'market' and they agree to 'conduct viewings'. Does the contract specify how many.....?

Since the decision of when to sell is the owner's, until the owner accepts an offer the contract with the EA remains in place.

But please, someone who's got a recent contract, feel free to contradict me.

They clearly don't have to conduct viewings whenever the vendor wants them to, as they have other houses to sell and other things to do.  Their contract almost certainly allows them to say they won't have time to do any more viewings on the OP's house for the next week, at least, for example.  Then it's just a matter of where you draw the line.  

donutandbeer

Just a thought - if you want more than 6k more, why not just put your guide price (offers over) higher? 

In our area, we’ve been seeing higher guide price because houses are being sold for more. If I know at the moment similar houses are being sold at £650k even though the guide price was £600k, then I would expect new houses come up with a guide price of something closer to £650k instead of £600k. 

ProDave

Taking a more realistic offer is more likely to succeed.

If someone offers way over, then chances are the purchase may collapse due to mortgage valuation being too low.

eidand

I am lost, you got an offer 6k over your asking price and you think your EA is not doing enough?
They clearly have, why are you not accepting that offer?