Choosing an estate agent

[Fluke]

I've just had a few valuations done on my home with view to putting it on the market in the new year, and it came down to a toss up between two. I live on a development of about 1200 properties and one agent in particular seems to get most of the business, they claim to have sold the vast majority of houses on this development in the last year, I haven't checked but I don't disbelieve them. The agent I decided to go with (haven't signed up with yet) is another local well established company but have done less business in this particular development of late. They've lowered their fee to entice new vendors which the other agent tells me is a ploy to "get back in" it's obviously a lucrative little pie and they want a slice of it. The fee is what swung it as, assuming the sale price is the one I would have got anyway, would cover my legal fees. Also the fact that they have a number of shops locally that people can wander into whereas the other is mainly an online outfit.

When I informed the first agent of my decision to go with the other, they came back fighting, warning me that my chosen agent doesn't advertise on Zoopla which accounts for 30% of their enquiries, that other vendors have dis-instructed them as they were not getting people through the door, and still others have had to lower their prices to get viewings.

I'm after advice, I know I need to check the Ts and Cs and not get tied in too long etc but is it a good thing or a bad thing when one agent gets most of the business? And if I go with my decision will the one I've jilted take revenge and counsel people against my house as potential buyers will inevitably be speaking with both agents as they view multiple properties. Or perhaps they have a point.

[James]

If the first estate agent complaining about the other estate agent is talking, assume he is lying.
Then go check with the other agent whether they do actually advertise on Zoopla and if not, why. If they don't, tell them they should discount further.

[monabri]

IF it doesn't sell with agent A then you can always take it to another...they will not turn you ( or rather the opportunity to make a commission and get cuedos for the SOLD sign).

The estate agent I used originally in the North West were not on Zoopla but on their own " On the market" ( who uses them?).

They might not be on Zoopla but check if they're on Rightmove.

[supremetwo]

Or you could try marketing and selling it on your own.

I did with my previous property and that was in the days when the only means of advertising was the local paper.

Did the conveyancing as well.

[Fluke]

Or you could try marketing and selling it on your own.

I did with my previous property and that was in the days when the only means of advertising was the local paper.

Did the conveyancing as well.

Do you know I would far rather do it myself, it would be me doing most of the work anyway, I might just look into that. With Rightmove, Zoopla etc, why don't more people sell privately?

[gryffron]

IME there are a few good individual estate agents. But each local agency relies on perhaps a couple of key staff, and those good people tend to get poached within the local area. Due to this movement of staff, the company that was great last year might be the worst today. Which doesn't help you much

I think online self-selling can work. Especially if you are selling to youngsters. If you're trying to sell to pensioners, forget it. But you will have a smaller selection of buyers. Which isn't great when the local housing market is slow.

When buying, I found agency opening hours to be a real problem. Some, especially those tied to banks/building societies, tend to follow their opening hours. 9-1 Saturday, closed Sunday. A right pain for working buyers. So if local shops are a selling point to you, do check they have decent opening hours.

Gryff

[JonE]

With Rightmove, Zoopla etc, why don't more people sell privately?

Bear in mind that access to PrimeLocation, Zoopla and the like is restricted: private individuals can't advertise their own place directly.

One could go through an online-only or hybrid agent to get a listing on such websites and they will have various ways of recovering the monthly cost to themselves of listing your property on those sites. This sector of the market is growing rapidly but, of course, that's from a very low base and there will always be a proportion of vendors who will require the services of a selling agent for whatever reasons.

There may be extra reasons why a vendor in Scotland might choose to appoint a selling agent.

Cheers!

[EssDeeAitch]

I think online self-selling can work. Especially if you are selling to youngsters. If you're trying to sell to pensioners, forget it. But you will have a smaller selection of buyers. Which isn't great when the local housing market is slow.
Gryff

Well, this pensioner did all primary research when buying our new house on-line with Rightmove supplemented by Zoopla. Here are some basic numbers from https://hoa.org.uk/advice/guides-for-ho ... h-is-best/ (article not dated so may be inaccurate to some degree?)

"Rightmove is currently the market leader, receiving 127.5 million visits per month. Zoopla says its websites (including Prime Location) and mobile apps attract over 50 million visits per month. If you’re looking to buy then you’ll want to know how many properties are listed. Currently Rightmove has 1.1 million properties listed while Zoopla has 927,000"

I would imagine that not being on Zoopla is no major impediment to adequately marketing your house.

[JohnB]

Pick houses for sale near you on with the competing agents, and see how easy it is to find them on the search engines, what the presentation looks like etc. Pretend to be a buyer for which your house would be ideal, and see if similar properties on the estate are flagged.

If you are contemplating a DIY service, I'd go for it, I've never been impressed with the value-add estate agents give for their hefty fees. I'd not self-conveyance, far too much to learn for such an rare event.

[TahiPanasDua]

If you are contemplating a DIY service, I'd go for it, I've never been impressed with the value-add estate agents give for their hefty fees. I'd not self-conveyance, far too much to learn for such an rare event.

I don't know how relevant my comments are but I just sold a flat within about 4 days. 2 others had sold within a week. I got 17.2% above the home report price.

An identical flat, in the same development and in good condition and with no potential problem in the home report, has been slow to sell. It has now moved to a fixed price, slightly unusual in Scotland where "offers over" is the norm. The price is the home report price so suggests a pessimistic outlook.

The only obvious difference is that they are using Purplebricks whereas we used an enthusiastic well known local broker. There may be other problems that I am unaware of but it is a modern well-kept block.

TP2

[robbelg]

Rightmove is the only one that matters.

I've just done a search for 2 bed flats in my area

Rightmove 450

Purple Bricks 8

Zoopla 0 Zero


Rob

[Hariseldon58]

I have done freelance property photography for some of the online agents.

If the property is well presented and described, the vendor able to talk confidently to potential purchasers, the property sensibly priced etc, an online agent works well.

Good pictures (not too many really help)

I sold three of mine own properties this way last year and it worked very well. The back office side varied between great and awful, same online agent, just a few months apart, after the awful experience I stopped working for this agent.

Curiously I averaged 15 thousand or so, over the bricks and mortar agents prices on each. (This was southern England not Scotland ) I very surprised that the local agents didn’t know their own markets, hopefully it’s better elsewhere.

Two examples


I spent £1,400 on a flat , replaced the carpets, an oven, paint to decorate and put in place a gas service , landlord’s gas certificate etc so that a potential Landlord could rent the property out immediately the purchase was completed.

A bungalow I spent £1,500 or so clearing some obstructions in the garden and obtained a (free) extended permitted development permission and commissioned a set of building Reg drawings of an extension. This appealed to the buyer, who had a ready to go project.

The local agents thought my small changes were worthless but all sold within days and clearly the buyers appreciated something ready to go. .

[TahiPanasDua]

The local agents thought my small changes were worthless but all sold within days and clearly the buyers appreciated something ready to go. .

Hariseldon,

My local agent, on the other hand, seemed impressed by our small improvements and predicted the substantial premium that we got within a week.

Three other flats in our development also sold recently within days using local agents as there is a shortage of good flats and semi-ds in our area. However, they achieved only the Scottish home report price which is so important as it dictates mortgage awards. The sluggishness of my other neighbour's identical flat therefore remains a mystery. The only obvious difference is the use of an online broker. Maybe he is unwittingly off-putting during viewings.

My ego suggests that our 17% premium resulted from being a retired architect. My wife is a colour-conscious art teacher. We used established space enhancement techniques including light neutral colours, consistent finishes, limited use of pattern, etc.

I often feel the urge to advise Rightmove advertisers on how to improve saleability with simple economical changes........but, of course, I never do !!!!!! One reason might be potential ego deflation were my wonderful interior design skills to prove less than helpful.

TP2

[Hariseldon58]

@TahiPanasDua

I'm sure there are good agents, regarding the flat it was apparent to me that a fairly new flat, looking spick and span, ready to go for a landlord would attract viewers, as it did. (The initial buyer failed in her mortgage and I released around 4 weeks on, the second time I had three back to back viewings and all three made offers within 24 hours.

The bungalow potential project, was sold a year or after the initial purchase in a flat market but the agent failed to spot the psychology of having a ready to go project. In all I sampled four agents and they were not impressive.

I'm always surprised that when you visit agents as buyer, how little one hears from them subsequently. I've always felt that a good estate agent could clean up locally, if they focussed on the buyers and not the houses.

You could be right in that your neighbour could put people off, walk the viewer thro the best rooms first, highlight any salient points then say nothing, fade into the background, so they can talk between themselves and be available to answer questions.

My local experience is of huge numbers of flats, poorly presented, crowded with furniture and overflowing cupboards, as a photographer I'd advise to rent a storage unit, very off putting to viewers, when its painfully apparent that storage is an issue in a flat....However well meaning the advice, people generally don't want to listen !



Put out a folder with details of bills and anything relevant a potential purchaser might find useful.

[UncleEbenezer]

You want maximum exposure, don't you?

There are two places that matter: Rightmove and Zoopla. I would instantly eliminate any agent that doesn't advertise you on both those.

Apart from that, what services do they provide? Put yourself in a buyer's shoes: how easy is the agent to contact? Do they have adequate staff to answer the phone most of the time, so that prospective buyers won't get fed up with no-response? Or if not then an automated system that more-or-less works, like purplebricks?

[brightncheerful]

Interesting question, one that I am currently asking myself now that we are planning on moving next year.

Temperamentally, i prefer to deal with chartered surveyors, even though I am not chartered myself. But long ago I realised that to be an estate agent (in the popular sense of the term) requires a different mind-set. I won't deal with anyone I consider 'sharp' or a 'cowboy' - fortunately there aren't any in our town - but I have relaxed my criteria. My immediate thought for our plans was to instruct a firm whose credentials i consider second-to-none. I spoke to its residential department agent and got some useful comment. But when I called into their office and met the person I wasn't as impressed because I got the feeling the person wouldn't be as bothered because our likely selling price is towards the lower end of the market. Also, he didn't know anything about a property nearby that had recently been sold by another agent. To my way of thinking, anyone dealing with sale of residential property in a locality should know about any property that has been sold or is on the market in that locality.

To answer the op, the objective is to sell your property at a price acceptable to you; and for the process to be as smooth as possible. To my way of thinking, whether an agent advertises on Rightmove, Zoopla or any of the other on-line outlets is immaterial. More importantly is whether the agent handles enough of the type of properties including price range that your property would fit into. For that, i would browse the windows of estate agency offices in your area and see what sort of property they are currently offering for sale - and if sold, presupposing displays include sold properties as well.

You could, of course, sell privately - but if you have never done so then be prepared for a steep learning curve. I don't deal with the sale of residential property but even with years of experience in the property market there is no way I'd want the hassle of trying to sell my own home myself.

[DiamondEcho]

Also, he didn't know anything about a property nearby that had recently been sold by another agent. To my way of thinking, anyone dealing with sale of residential property in a locality should know about any property that has been sold or is on the market in that locality.

Agreed. If/when they give a valuation you need to know how it's derived. And IME preferably it's derived from other similar property they have sold in the area. IME it cannot be derived any other way, it's based on a local sale, and then tweaked up/down. So don't be shy in asking for 'their comparitives' and to explain those comparitors and how they differed. When they do they should join the dots for you, by explaining 'well that had a modern kitchen and bathrooms', or 'it was a complete new and nicely done reno', or 'it lacked outside space and needed a full reno and internal restructuring', and so on. Any differences should make some sense and hopefully you'd already have been following yr local market for a while and made e-copies of their listings/photos/floorplans etc at the time of their listing.

[Infrasonic]

^^ Yep, recently had 3 valuations done, two local EA's and Purple Bricks with a locally based rep.
All 3 had printed literature (or laptop with PB) on recent local sales with pictures, so it was pretty obvious why properties that went immediately to sealed bids and/or went for over asking price had done so. Show homes in the main...
Those which were in need of some modernisation work and had sat on the books for a while until a price drop was achieved were also featured, so being 'realistic' is definitely an advantage if you want a quick sale...
The property I'm currently selling is somewhere in the middle, it's had maintenance/modernisation works done in the last five years but could do with a bit more, so I doubt very much that sealed bids and over asking price will be a realistic proposition.
I've already factored in a 5-8K negotiating window for any haggling...