How to choose an estate agent??

[cheminotte]

We are thinking about putting our house on the market. What should we look for in an agent? How do you choose which do go with? What are must-haves? Floor plans? Viewings by them?

I would look in the local paper and choose an Estate Agent that sells the type of house that you have - near us there are ones that tend to specialise in big expensive houses, some that do mid-range and others that seem to mostly have the lower end of the market - I wouldn't bother looking at ones that don't fit in with the type of house I was looking for. That said, a lot of people will look online - so make sure they are on one of the major websites. Otherwise ask around for recommendations - we have a mums' group for our area on Facebook and they are good for asking advice. Floor plans are good - and lots of photos if your house is nice I'm not sure about viewings by the agent - they aren't as invested, so won't be upset if the people don't like aspects of the house, but also they can't always answer questions about the area - I was in the house when an agent was showing people round and I could hear him saying that he didn't know what the schools were like nearby, etc. Good luck!

Thanks Hippee - yes we have a quote from the agency we bought the house from originally, another agent and now need a third. There's a big gap between their 2 prices so not sure which way to go. What about a solicitor who is also an estate agent? Is that worth it?

We're using Housenetwork currently - obviously still in the process but really really impressed so far! Fingers crossed. They're an online agent and waaaaaay cheaper than high St agents.

We are registered with high st agents as buyers and I literally do not know what they do. All the properties they send us are ones we have already seen on property websites, and the estate agent who sold us the flat we're now selling just chatted about football during our viewing and didn't really do anything. So I'm glad we're not paying for that!

Pose as a buyer - choose the one who mithers you the most.

I would also recommend using an online agent. I've just sold my house with Purplebricks (who charge £665 plus VAT) and, as BreeVDKamp says, the traditional agents don't really seem to offer any more for the huge amount of commission it will cost you.

In my case, every penny counts because personal circumstances have forced me to sell/downsize - with a very limited budget and living in a stupidly expensive area, it was a gamble worth taking.

The downside of using an online agent is that when I speak to traditional agents about properties I'm interested in, most of them are not particularly friendly towards me, plus they want to sell to an investor because they will then potentially get the rental business as well - but that's another issue and I have completely hijacked your post - sorry!

We have viewed a few houses and ruled out some agents following that. But wanted to see one recently and the agent said the sellers didn't want viewings unless the buyer's house was at least already on the market. So a bit Catch-22.

I would rather an agency does the viewing if that means they can do some during the day while we're out at school / work rather than on an evening when DC are in bed or at weekend so 1 parent vacates house with DC while the other does viewings.

Glad to hear some views on Purplebricks - I am considering using them. We would probably add the agent doing the viewings package so we could keep ds out of the way. I am going to get 3 quotes - look at packages and valuations. for a divorce i got numerous valuations years ago and they varied alot

We chose the one who had the most SOLD signs up in our area.

We've put it on the market this week. Went with estate agent we liked best, but priced slightly lower than they recommended as the other 2 were lower.

I second pose as a buyer. When we bought our house I was shocked to only be given 10 mins to view a 5 bed house but then to be told looks at all this damp you should get them to knock some money off for that. This was from one of the more professional looking estate agents in our area.

Find one that really knows the area, can give potential buyers all the low-down on schools, transport etc. We had one that got lost, couldn't find the place, and then could tell us nothing about the area.

We've just sold our apartment in less than two weeks for the full asking price thanks to a fab estate agent. I think they were good for most of the reasons listed by Hippee: they had an office with a window just round the corner from our house, they sold other properties like ours, they had a great internet site and were also on all big general property search engines, they took great photos so it looked good on the site and the agent really knew the area - not just a kid who'd never lived there and didn't live there now. I also think they priced it right. I think our agent knew what it would sell for having sold lots like it. Price it too high in the expectation of getting an offer and the people who can actually afford it might not even look at it (if they type in a lower price as their upper limit in a search engine). The longer it's hanging around the more it looks like there is something wrong with it.