Are agent letters about local families seeking a house usually a sales ploy?

[CommandStrip]

A letter through the door from an agent claiming to be representing a local family looking for a house in the area. My suspicion is that letters like this are generally a swizz trying to get you to sign up with them and there is no family. Is that right though?

Not necessarily - they probably do have someone either looking for a house just like yours or in a particular area. If youre not thinking of selling just ignore it.

Unless you’re living under a rock there is a major housing shortage, so it’s most likely real.

Yes this is common- they send you a letter about a family looking for a house like yours. When you contact them they tell you that that family have now found somewhere but how about the agents give you a valuation anyway yadda yadda because they have lots of potential buyers…

Could be Phil and Kirstie

I get them quite often using a couple of ploys like this:

"We have clients interested in properties like yours - call us today to arrange an appointment"

"Properties like yours are very much in demand. Call us today to see how we can sell it for you"

I'm not interested in selling so I ignore them!

We live in a popular area and we regularly get letters from people and flyers from estate agents regarding selling our home. I don’t think there is any ploy as such, just the state of the market. When I’m looking at the boggy garden after all the rain and how much decorating we need to do, I’m tempted to say it’s yours for a fiver!

Had these letters for last 20 years we’ve lived here. So odd can’t possibly be that desperate for houses in this area so I say it’s a sales pitch indirect

Thanks everyone. They give lots of info about a specific family and it all sounds a bit too good to be true (no chain, massive budget etc). We are planing to go on the market later this year so I'd be interested if there were a genuine family who could view as a one off but I'm not interested in listing with these guys generally, which it sounds like is what it is.