Tell me your stories of swapping estate agents - good and bad!

[Shattered04]

We've just ditched our useless Estate Agent after they couldn't have been less interested in trying to sell our pretty average house over the last three months in a fairly "hot" area. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say I'm fairly sure we should have sold if the agent had actually made an effort, and hadn't screwed up the Rightmove listing for the first three weeks and ignored our requests to fix it - and it was still pretty shite even after that!

It isn't price; if anything we reduced too far out of desperation at seeing all the places we wanted to buy get snapped up. Most likely people think the place is a lemon due to that and length of time on the market, and it's not I'd think it, for starters!

Anyway, we're going to carefully choose another agent with a break of a few weeks with no marketing, but in the meantime I'd love to hear your stories of how things went after swapping! Did the right agent make all the difference? Or did you still struggle to sell?

Thanks!!

We were selling our bungalow and the first estate agent was rubbish. It had been on the market for months and towards the end he really couldn't care less, my MIL actually heard him showing someone round and he was just 'here's the bathroom, here's the living room' without pointing out any of the lovely features. We switched to another agent, and it sold within a month. Their fees were a lot higher though so I think there may be an element of you get what you pay for but the strategy worked and they were fantastic right up until completion.

That's brilliant your MIL heard what they were like! I imagine ours to be similar - when we showed them round, they asked nothing about the place, took under two minutes (it's four bedroom!) and seemed very disinterested when we pointed out the unique selling points.

I agree, I suspect you do get what you pay for! Ours were below the average rate, but had good reviews on Google so we felt reassured. After looking at those reviews on Google more closely when we started having problems, it was interesting to see most were from buyers, not sellers and were mostly during a time when houses were selling themselves!

If the market is "hot" it does seem a bit surprising it didn't sell. There are so few houses for sale that just listing on rightmove ought to get viewings, and then offers.

It's "hottish" here - definitely not like it was (there have been reductions in some price brackets, including ours but usually they were overpriced to begin with) but a long way from dead, for sure. The listing was pants, especially initially, which I am sure put a lot off, but we did get about a dozen viewers in total. According to the ex-agents, quite a few viewers were interested, but ended up finding something else they preferred more; no real negative feedback. My theory is that because it's not exactly a "character" house, neither is it a show home or a "project", so it definitely needs an agent who is enthusiastic about it to sell it, which is why I'm hoping a new agent who gives a damn will make a difference!

We swapped as soon as we’d met the minimum term as EA1 was utterly useless. Each week we were met with more reasons as to why we needed to reduce the price just a little bit more and then they’d definitely be able to sell it. They made zero attempt to understand the house, it was just one excuse after another.

We dropped the price by £50 to bring the house into a lower price bracket and relisted with EA2. They took it on on the Wednesday, within 24hrs had multiple viewings booked for the Saturday and we accepted a full asking price offer on the Monday.

I've swapped twice on two separate houses and they both sold within weeks! For the second house I wrote all the lines and had professional photos. You need an ea who will aggressively sell for you.

Thank you! That's very reassuring

I admit to not being very discerning when we went for this lot - they'd done the whole letter through the door "buyer desperate to buy on your road" (who never even viewed...) and a quick check of reviews suggested they weren't dreadful, so we thought we may as well as we'd heard about the "current seller's market". Lesson painfully learned! The next agent will indeed need to be aggressive; it's what this place needs especially now it's already been on for a while.

Some EAs really are unimpressive to say the least

Indeed! It's been a valuable lesson for me - perhaps I shouldn't rule out houses that have been on for months in case they're in the exact same situation we were in. And there may well be a chance to grab a bargain as a result.

I was skeptical about how much difference an agent would make, but after jettisoning the first one I used, it was a huge difference.

The first was from a big national agency that took photos that were a bit meh. They organised an open day and said I'd have about 20 people, but actually I only got about 5 or 6. Their suggestion was we put a price range we'd accept - big mistake. We only got one offer and it was of course at the bottom of that range. They claimed the others said the lack of period features put them off. Some family thought we were nuts not taking the offer, but as I wasn't in a hurry I took it off the market and waited a month or two before putting on with a different agent.

Next agents - very experienced local guys with only a few branches - took better photos, got over a dozen people for an open in and I got 4 or 5 offers that went to a bidding war way over the asking and got over 40k more than the offer I got from previous agents. They just made more effort and had a better pricing strategy.

The bungalow we put an offer on had been on since jan. they lost their sale and carried on trying to sell it. We loved it and I knew as soon as I went through the door it was for us. I won’t be put off by how long it has been on for.
Houses stay on the market for a long time for lots of reasons … chain break down etc etc. Always go and have a look.
Also some estate agents are crap at photos. So I would always go and view