Selling with same agent as buying - will it increase our chances?

[Honey2]

Hi all,
We've seen a house we like - came on 1-2 weeks ago. Agent says its popular (of course they do) but I'm inclined to agree it might be. Our house is not yet on the market so we need to move quick.
Question is should we sell ours with same agent as we'd like to buy from - will it increase our chances or selling and securing this house?
Agent selling the property we want is quite a bit more expensive - in the grand scheme of things its not massive but we could do without spending the £2000 extra if we dont need to....

thanks!

Personally because of the nature of selling houses and how quickly things change I would go with the EA you want to use. If this one is good value for money then fine but if it not then look elsewhere. In some ways if they are selling both houses - ok they have an interest to get both houses sold but legally they should be putting all offers to the seller so you wouldn't get special treatment there. We were buying a house that was sold by our EA as well...but that seller pulled out after not being able to find anywhere and our next house we are just waiting for completion on is with a different agent and has also been fine to deal with. A lot of it comes down to whether the solicitor is any good on both sides once the offer is accepted anyway.

The Panorama on EAs the other day raised a conflict of interest. If they know your buying budget, they can find out or guess your selling budget too. So if they just want the whole chain done quickly, they can pressure you to drop your price to achieve a sale (imagine: 'your sellers can't wait forever'), whereas your own EA only has one prerogative: you.

Even doubly so if they're trying to get you to use their mortgage advisor. It's unethical and probably illegal, but the EA on Panorama was basically able to get information on what the person could afford to DROP their selling price to.

Personally, I wouldn't.

I doubt there would be any benefit. I'd go with whichever agent you think will do best at selling your house.

Yes, I would ideally go with them so they are motivated to keep the chain together. I would ask for a discount on the fee though, IME it's entirely possible, especially if you have another, better priced, agent in mind.

We did exactly this.

Pros - they worked hard to sell our house and find buyers - the house we were buying was hard to sell though so they wanted to keep us in the chain.

less people to talk to on the chain.

Cons - they turned out to be highly annoying and I felt overdosed on them as the seller and buyer with them. In hindsight, Im not sure if we’d have done it again. We got our dream house but it was a PAINFUL year.

I would choose them as they will be the most motivated to find you a buyer quickly and keep the chain together.

I would go with the one you like, we went with one who was selling the house we wanted, that fell through and we are stuck with her now and I honestly can’t stand her. Caught her lying to us numerous times and I honestly wish we had never gone with her!