Estate agent advice

[mama2girls0]

Hi there, we are planning to put our house on the market in a few weeks. We were first time buyers when we bought it so have never done this before. Does anyone have any advice please, Ie is it best to ask lots of ones in the area for valuations first and also their fees and then are we able to haggle a bit or is that not usual practice? Thanks

Get three valuations. Look at their websites to see who has a lot on their books in your area.
Ask local friends for recommendations too even your local fb group.
Always negotiate their fee.

We had 3 come round. Used the medium value one because we liked them the best and we haggled down the fee a bit. Avoided the agents that sold us the house after how they dealt with it.
Didn't like the online agents, I've heard terrible things about their customer service and ability to get sales through. Also buyers avoid houses they're selling and when we were looking round I worked out quickly why.
It actually sold for much more than the valuation but it was the crazy summer of 2021.
The agent got a professional photographer, consulted us on the photos and advert. Made the house look amazing. She chased stuff throughout and they also put aside 2 full days at short notice for back to back viewings.
It also helped we could walk to their office to signed stuff, show ID etc. same with the solicitors they were also within walking distance.

As others have said usual to seek 3. When we went on we looked at which agents locally had sold similar property recently. We also looked at the photos, descriptions and floor plans of their listings as in our view they varied a lot in terms of 'quality' and what they said about the area's selling points. Also, if you don't sell fairly quickly expect the other 2 agents who don't get the contract to keep coming back to you to say 'you're not selling, try us instead, etc.'

We got valuations from 3 (ended up being 4 in the end as DH got talked into Foxtons coming round as we were interested in a house they had on their books even though I would never have gone with them).

One I discounted as I didn't like him and he gave us a very lowball valuation. The other two had similar valuations and fees - I looked at what they had sold recently, and the sort of network their offices had and where they would pull in buyers from and went with the one that was best for that. And they got us pretty much bang on what they said they would.