Selling in Bishopston, Bristol - EA Recommendations Please

[DancingFerret]

Title says most of it; it'll be a Probate sale, if that makes any difference. I don't live in Bristol and there seem to be quite a few agents in the area, so I'd be grateful for recommendations based on personal experience.

I used Ocean when I sold my house in Bristol last year, the branch on Gloucester Rd, so that'd be handy for Bishopston. My estate agent was called Ella and she was really good, I'd definitely recommend her.

So we're just now buying in Bishopsworth (south Bristol) rather than Bishopston (north). But we've been looking for well over a year so I do have some experience of Bristol estate agents, albeit from the buying side.
I just had a look on Rightmove to see which ones operate in Bishopsworth. There's a lot of properties being marketed by CJ Hole. They do seem to have some areas sewn up somewhat. We've had dealings with them and not found them to be very reliable, not good at getting back to us re appointments for instance, and not answering the phone.

You've got Andrews, Ocean and Taylors are probably the next big 3, and much of a muchness. In your position I'd probably try to use one of those. The other ones listed as selling in Bishopsworth are smaller. Unless you particularly want to deal with a small agency they wouldn't be my first choice.

I don't know enough about any of the others.
We've had dealings with an EA in south Bristol who I'd recommend but I think they are a bit area specific, based in Whitchurch and covering Whitchurch and surrounding areas so probably no good to you. But IMHO have gone a bit above and beyond in helpfulness, although we have not ended up buying from them.

Hope some of that's helpful?

Boardwalk do the best pics by far although take a funny approach by including a seller’s spiel. Elephant seem to pick up a lot of business in that area too especially the Victorian semis/terraces

I recently moved from Clifton to Bishopston. Sold with Howard’s on Whiteladies road, bought with Elephant on Glos road.

I sold with Howard’s because I bought the flat I was selling from them a few years before and thought they were good. They’re really good at progressing the sale. They’ll email all involved parties every week constantly chasing at every stage. On one hand quite annoying, but on the other hand really useful. They’re like a dog with a bone. Estate agents work for the buyer but I found them helpful as a first time buyer as they told me exactly what I needed to do at each stage.

Elephant on the other hand were very hands off. We had zero contact from them post memorandum of sale for a good 8 weeks or so. Which we thought was odd. If I was a first time buyer I would have been totally lost. We mentioned it to our surveyor and he agreed elephant were very hands off and he felt it was because houses sell so easily in Bishopston they don’t need to put the work in!

I used CJ Hole and they were really great, especially as I had a somewhat tricky sale.

I would really recomend Nexa, Laura Joyce in particular.

Thank you all for responding. Agree about Boardwalk's odd inclusion of the seller's spiel; I've seen it and wondered if it's actually helpful to prospective buyers.

I think the way forward is to "interview" three agents and take it from there.