Estate Agents Proceed with Caution (Estate Agents in general)

Member Name: marln04

Product:	Estate Agents in general
Date:	12/08/08 (75 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good at marketing your property.

Disadvantages: Can be expensive

It has been five years since we sold our first house and we are now in the process of trying to sell up and move on to something new. I can't believe the difference between the experience of selling and buying five years ago and now. Five years ago the property market was obviously still on a steep rise and the estate agents at the time couldn't be more upbeat, there wasn't much that they couldn't sell! In fact we sold our last house in three days so that was about £1400 for the estate agent for three days work. Basically depending on the agreed agents fee this could be anything from 0.75% upto 4.5% the estate agent receives the same amount whether they sell your property within three days or 6 months or for however long it takes. Our most recent experiences of estate agents at a moment are a lot different, they seem quite happy for you to take any offer just to get a sale. If your agents fees are only 1.5% then £10,000 off of the asking price of your house is only worth £150 to them. However I do appreciate that in the current market estate agents have to work a lot harder to secure a sale which could also take them a lot longer to achieve. Perhaps they are now earning the correct rate for the amount of work put in? I have always been advised to get a number of agents to value your property and never take the highest valuation as the agent to market your house. Also be aware of long sole agency agreements, this means that if the agent marketing your property is not achieving any interest within a time scale that you are happy with then you will not be able to market your house with another agent until the sole agent agreement with your current estate agent runs out. Our current agent seems quite good apart from some pressure to take a low offer they are marketing our property well and we are also receiving some good viewings from people that are interested in our type of house and not just people dragged in by the estate agents to achieve viewings. Overall its not such a bad experience dealing with estate agents you just need to pick carefully who you want to market your house.

Summary: Not all estate agents are bad