EA location. Does it matter?

[Feebeela]

Hi,
I'm interested in your wise thoughts.
Had the house on the market for a month; viewings but no offers. We've been told it's slightly overpriced so we are prepared to drop but not by too much.
Our current agents are national and well respected but their nearest office is a couple of miles away. They sell a lot in our local area. I'm happy but they aren't "local local". We are being pursued by a local EA with offices 1/2 mile away, who say that they have 'hot' buyers and all we need to do is sign with them and we'll sell. My question is this; in the age of Rightmove, Zoopla etc, does it matter if an EA is local? When I am househunting, I look on these sites and decide if I want to contact the EA based on the house rather than the location of the EA office. What do you think? Stick with the EA we have (good relationship, seem to be working hard for us just a shit market) or go local? I mean, the only good EA is going to be the one selling my house, right?

I tend to agree with you on the it doesn't matter. We are buying a house ( or trying too ) in an area over 3hrs drive from where we live so we are very reliant on Rightmove, Zoopla, Prime location and On the Market to source properties. I have also googled estate agents in Dorset and Wiltshire so I can look on websites but to be honest haven't found much that's not been on one of the 4 above or one website of agents who use them. A lot of people spend there spare time on the internet now for all kinds of shopping including researching and buying houses. I don't go out looking in estate agents windows as far too many just have houses marked SSTC and not a lot else

Have you researched what other houses in the area are going for and also how they have been staged and marketed? It's worth googling your street name too and checking Police.uk to check crime maps too, I do all this and more when considering houses that we might view as it's not just how much we like a house as it looks lovely and has a nice layout. We had our heart set on one house then discovered a town centre regeneration plan had been announced very recently and the quiet currently dead end street was being reopened and will be part of the feeder toad system for the town

Do you have friends or friends of friends who have sold
Locally who can recommend EA's ?

*road

Imo no, it doesn't. We chose an EA in a neighbouring suburb rather than the closest suburb when we sold our last house. We chose them because we thought they were the ones who would get it sold for us and everything is online these days. The 'local' agent was most put out. The ones we went with weren't perfect but the person who pitched for the instruction did the sales progression and worked hard to keep the chain together.