MissEllie

I'm in to the fourth year of my house being on the market and my third estate agent. Doesn't matter how high or low they value your home, a property is only worth what people are willing to pay for it. You can look around yourself on the internet and see what similar properties are going for in your area and decide how much you want to market it for. My advice would be, if you want to use an estate agent, go for the absolute cheapest. They all stick it on the internet and wait for people to call, they won't do any work beyond that. Personally I'd appreciate a call every now and then to tell me that they are still alive but they don't even give me that courtesy - makes you wonder what you are paying them for:( Haybrooks called me repeatedly (when it was on the market with another agent) and asked if they could come and give me the benefit of their advice. Their "valuer" actually told me my house wouldn't sell because it has artex ceilings and unless I was prepared to spend thousands smoothing them over they weren't prepared to market my property!!! It really boils down to where your house is and the price.

I used to live out that way. All I can tell you is don't bother, particularly if you are a Sheffielder.

As someone who has their house up for sale with a different estate agent, I've been keeping an eye on them. They bombarded me with "we can sell your house" calls/letters and then when they came to value the house they told me that basically they couldn't sell it. My neighbour has just sold with Haybrook and not only do they send round viewers who clearly can't afford (or don't want to pay) the asking price and haven't looked at the property brochure, they are driving prices down. Let me explain ... they list your house at a certain price range, say £150,000-£160,000 (please, now who is going to come along and offer you £160K, anybody?). Then when it hasn't sold for about a month, they come along and tell you that houses like yours are selling in your area at X amount and you'll have to drop the price to sell. This is fine if you have a lot of equity in your property and can afford to come down a little bit, but if you haven't then you are stuck. There are a lot selling in our area through Haybrook and property prices are falling - the only ones selling are those that can afford to take a cut, which is driving down house prices generally. I'm not happy with them and I'm not even a customer!