How fast is the housing market moving in Bristol (particularly Bishopston / St Andrews area/)

[SaveMeTheWaltz]

I could ask the estate agents this, but I'm not sure the advice that they give would be completely impartial!

We are trying to move from London to Bristol, and aiming to buy a house in the Bishopston area. We have DCs in school, so can only really view at weekends, which is proving a bit problematic. I feel uncomfortable at the idea of buying a house without a second viewing, but estate agents are making us feel as if properties will get snapped up before we can get back to Bristol to see it a second time. Is this really true? Will we miss out if we take the time to really think before jumping in with an offer? Has anyone got experience of how quickly the Bristol market is moving at the moment? (We are looking at houses between 500-750, so not inconsequential sums of cash - I feel really surprised at the suggestion that we should buy something off the back of a single 15 minute viewing).
Thanks!

Estate agents exaggerate but in this case they may have a point, Desirable houses will sell quickly in Bristol.
We bought our house in south Bristol before it went on the market, estate agent let us view it before it got to market.
We sold ours immediately.
I think youjust have to see what happens, if you love a house and see it on a Saturday do a second viewing on the Sunday. Do both viewings on the same weekend. If the estate agent is exaggerating and you can spend a few days considering an offer you will soon find out. Some vendors have open days where they will have perhaps 20 viewings on the same day.
Make your first viewings more detailed than a 15 mins look around.
Don't believe what the agents tell you about schools, do your own research.
Just because the vendors children go to X school doesn't mean that your children would get a place the if the catchment has narrowed.
Good luck with your move.

You are definitely buying in a popular area, but I think things have slowed down a bit.

We sold in 2014, having a Saturday and Monday open day with 50+ viewings over the 2 days and went to best and final offers on the Wed - had 9 offers, 3 serious contenders.

We bought locally too then, most houses sold quickly but we didn't get into a bidding war to buy ours (only one we offered on of 15 or so viewed).

Anyway, I still have right move alert on from then and to me it feels things are on a little longer and have seen a few being reduced and / or coming back onto market with new agent recently. But of course, I'm not viewing them and there may be reasons for this. Suspect the nicely finished ones, near schools will still go fast.

Feel free to ask questions, I'm on my third house in the area and have friends with dc at various local schools so know it fairly well.

PS - I first viewed our house alone for about 10 mins. DH saw it with me next day for about 20 mins before we offered so we didn't have much to go on. Survey will spot stuff that matters and location, room size, feel, decor etc you can gauge pretty quick. Good luck.

We're in a 'best and final bids on Monday' position for a house we saw on Thursday, so going altogether too fast for my liking. I worry that it'll slow down pretty soon though, as London market has.

Things have slowed. Have you heard of Elephant? Local estate agent on Gloucester Road, have a fair few houses in the areas you're looking in. They seemed more honest than some others we dealt with

Thanks everyone! We saw a house that we liked today and put in an offer at asking price. Now just need to wait until Monday to find out if our offer has been accepted - fingers crossed!