Choosing an estate agent - go for one in local town or more upmarket one slightly further away?

[lucytr]

Does the estate agent matter when selling?

I am currently in the process of selling my parents' house - a nice four bedroom detached in a rural village in the West country. The village is mostly normal with a few posh houses and a few 'down from London' types but not overrun.. The house is all perfectly serviceable but inevitably dated - the new owner will probably want to fit new kitchen/bathroom/ make it more fancy etc etc

My question is which estate agent do I use - one in the local town about three miles away or one in the posher town 10 miles the other way? .If its in the local town the house will be one of the more expensive on the books, if its the posher town it will be in the middle of their range. Looking at recent sales in the village its been a mix of agents inlcuidng one or two sales with agents 20+ miles away. .
What would you do? Any thoughts? Advice?

We are in the same position and went for the local agent who knows the area well.

The people who have been to look (and I have to warn you, they are very few and far between atm) have been a mix of retirees, downsizers and a few younger couples. Some have been local and some wanting to relocate from the SE.

I'm in a similar position and have gone for the posher more expensive agent a few miles away. Partly because they have a wider pool of potential buyers and partly because they take fabulous photos that show the house, garden and views to their best advantage. Unlike the local agents who turn up on a foggy day, switch on all the overhead lights, stick a revolving camera in the middle of the floor and take weird wide-lens photos with no proper colour in them and at unflattering angles.

Is there any difference in the fees?
For me it would depend a lot on how much I liked the individual(s) I’d mainly be dealing with. If you know anyone who’s used either of them, I would also ask if they’d recommend them and specifically if the agent was good at pushing things along once an offer was accepted.

I think they’re all liars about ‘having a pool of buyers’.

You’ll probably find your buyer by appearing on rightmove.

They haven't said that. They are based in a very popular area where they sell a good number of unusual and interesting properties, and I'm hoping that they will be able to suggest our (also unusual and interesting) house as an alternative, being in a slightly cheaper but still very attractive area that these folk would not otherwise consider.
It wouldn't make much difference which of the local agents we used because everyone interested in our town just looks on Rightmove. But I would choose the agent that takes the best photo.

When we looking to sell our period, village house a few years back, we planned to use the upmarket EA in a market town about five miles away as we felt our fully renovated, tastefully presented/extended, 5 bed/2500 sq ft house was right up their street.

Spoke with the pompous twat of a manager who informed us his buyers (mostly from London, apparently) wouldn't be interested in a property in that village because it straddled an A road. He point blank refused to come out to do a valuation!

Some of our neighbours in the chocolate box village (ours was one of several characterful thatched - but more importantly, not listed -houses) were DFLs, perfectly happy with their weekend boltholes there.

In the end we went with a less-up-themselves EA in the nearest village who found us a - local - buyer in five weeks (when everyone had warned us to expect the sale to take a year).

Good luck with the sale @lucytr!

I have two suggestions to make regarding this having recently sold my father's home and also sold and bought my own.

1. Meet them, get them out for a valuation and a chat around how they work. Will the person you meet do viewings or somebody unknown from the office? Who follows up with enquiries etc. From here, who do you feel will represent the property best?
2. book some viewings of other properties with various agents. Who handles the booking, the viewing and the follow up best from your perspective as a potential buyer? Were multiple people involved? did one person see the whole process through? what /who were you most comfortable with? who had the knowledge of the property you were viewing? etc

Don’t use one which doesn’t have a dedicated sales progressor. Make sure you meet the sales progressor to see if they are good, not just the sales manager.

OP hasn't described the house in much detail. People here are talking about selling interesting period properties in pretty villages. Just because it's in a rural village doesn't mean the house is anything but fairly ordinary.

The house we are selling (or trying to) is an ordinary modern house, although very nice. Going to an EA who specialises in dream country cottages would be pointless in our case, and maybe in OPs case too.