Which estate agent?

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We’re probably going to put our house on the market early next year. We have had valuations from three agents. The two we’re considering are quite different, and I wondered if you wise folk can spot any advantages/disadvantages with either.

Info: the house is a standard, modern, 4 bed detached on a recent development. Valued at approx. £370k.

Agent A:
Small, local agent, no business outside the nearest town and its surrounding villages. Cheaper on fee percentage.
Sells lots of houses like ours, at the lower end of the detached 4-bed market. Highly unlikely to be selling anything we’d want to move to, as we’re jumping up the ladder a bit. I’ve never seen them advertise anything that fits our search criteria.

Agent B:
National chain, ‘prestigious’ agent that usually deals with higher priced houses (mainly in the £500k-£1m market), more individual, rural houses. They don’t sell a lot like ours, but the agent seemed confident some of the buyers on their books could be interested in a house like ours. Higher on fees, but not unaffordably so.
They seem to be the ‘go to’ agent for properties of the price and type we would buy.
They seemed more strategic about pricing our property (eg. Considering where it would appear in search results)

Our current thinking is that we should go with Agent B, because:

1. They are a national chain and so could attract buyers from out of town (our area is getting popular with Londoners moving out for bigger properties but still needing to commute).
2. They are MUCH more likely to be selling a house we’d want to buy (probably two-thirds of the houses we’ve liked have been with them), and I wonder if they’d be more invested in selling ours if they were also trying to sell us our onward purchase. They’ve said they could do some leaflet dropping in our target area (which we’d planned to do anyway) to try to proactively find us a property to buy.
3. Perhaps a more prestigious brand of agent might make the property more attractive? I know when searching I look favourably upon their properties, and don’t look as favourably upon some of the lower-end agents or PB types.

What else should we be considering? Do you think it would it be a mistake to choose Agent B?

I can't comment on your agents but you seem to be coming to some strange conclusions.
I don't think it matters at all that agent B is selling the types of property you want.
Confident he could sell....it is in their DNA to be unjustifiably confident.
I would go with A because they do it all the time and people are usually good at things they do a lot. I don't know though, they may be slapdash and complacent. Are they?
Local knowledge means a lot. I think Rightmove trumps an extensive network of agents.

Presumably Agent A advertises on Rightmove? They are then just as likely to attract buyers from out of the area as a larger national chain. As a rule people don’t go in to the office to physically register anymore. Whether an agent has 1 office or 101 is no longer a factor like it used to be.

If I were you I would go with A

It's irrelevant that B sells properties you would want to sell

I think it's also irrelevant that they're national and will attract other people. With portals like Rightmove and zoopla people don't go straight to the agent , they just look at one website and go from there. Just because they are wider known, it doesn't mean you'll attract out of towners

If A sell more properties like yours they will be much more familiar with what "people like you" want. They will know what feedback has been given on similar properties to you which will be important in selling your property.

A all the way is what I think

Hmmm that’s definitely given me a lot to think about! Thanks guys - it seems we’ve drawn completely the wrong conclusion!

A

I always think the prestigious national agents tend to overvalue. It would put me off buying a house through them, I'd worry it was overpriced.

I suppose my thinking with the national chain thing is that someone might be looking to leave London, but not be too fussed where in the Home Counties they went, so wouldn’t necessarily see our property on a Rightmove search, but perhaps they’d find it via an agent...

The national one also has local knowledge and a local office - they’re just part of a chain rather than a small independent.

They both use Rightmove and Zoopla.

Agent A didn’t come across as complacent or slapdash. But they also didn’t seem as interested in our business (though that’s not necessarily a bad thing).

Maybe the answer is to find an Agent C!

@Billericaydicky that’s interesting. I’d tend to agree when we lived in London - one agent in particular notoriously overvalued by a huge amount. I’m not sure if it’s the case here - the valuations were all within a £5k range of each other. And we’d accept a bit less than asking price. But we wouldn’t want to put people off viewing!

We decided to sell through the agent we wanted to but through (having already found our new properly before listing ours) and in casual conversation with them he mentioned he was pushing our sale more because then it'd mean two lots of commission for him as we'd be able to buy the house we wanted quickly. Obviously I can't say for every company but for us selling and buying through the same company did help!

💯 A!

@HoneyWheeler that was my thinking with B, that they might be a bit more on-the-ball with keeping everything moving if we were also buying through them. Obviously I have. I way of knowing whether the house we end up buying will be with them but there’s a good chance it would be, and next to zero chance it would be with agent A as they just don’t deal in that segment of the market.

We have sold with basically agent A. They are local in the town, sell lots of houses like mine - and when they have similar it's actually a good thing because if a buyer asks to see a house, they then say 'why not see them all together' - so you get more viewings (albeit not necessarily more offers).

However, when it came to find property, agent A didn't have anything we wanted for the longest time. We were moving up a bracket and those houses were mostly with the agent Bs, which is fine in a normal market but now when houses have dried up, most agents tell their clients (waiting to buy) when they find something new, before it gets to Rightmove.

e.g. I haven't managed to view a single house in over two months with Charter Whyman. I don't know if it's snobbery (our budget is at their lower end) or they just would rather their clients see things than us, or what. They do videos during Covid and they won't even send me those if they don't think I'm right for a house! Seriously! So I suppose the other thing to consider is if you sell with someone like them, they do so much gatekeeping there could be potential buyers who never get to see your house.

In the end, Agent A DID find the property I want - in fact told me about two before they went on the market. She remembered I wanted a particular road and basically sold me to the seller and got me in to have a viewing that same day she saw it.

Agent A every time. We tried to use an agent B because we wanted a house they were selling. After months of not selling we lost the house we wanted and had to switch agents. All you need to know is selling lots of houses like ours. That is the only thing that matters.

if your property is standard with no major complication, I will advice you to go for an online agent and save yourself a fortune.

A. The single most important thing is that they are selling houses like yours. That's all you need. Everyone looks on Rightmove - you need to be on there.

A little update: we’re going with Agent C, who’s like agent A in that they’re local and sell lots of properties like ours, but I got a better feeling about them!

So thanks for all your advice - I did listen!

Agent A.

Wouldn’t touch the big chains personally.