Estate agent and lettings MEGATHREAD - No advertising in here

[Tradescanthia 10]

I would'nt pay any upfront fees, no professional presents his bill until the job is done to your satisfaction. The market is so bad at present I would even try to knock 'em down to the minimum.

The boot is on the other foot now.

[fifikeeling 10]

Personally I would have to say WH Brown I recently bought my house from them, and they were great not one complaint.

[Skink 10]

we were moving to Sheffield a year or so ago and very quickly stopped dealing with Blundells as they behaved like utter sharks - we seemed to get stuff in the wrong areas (and we were very specific about school catchments etc, thank god we checked!) or they sent stuff that wasnt selling (while in the office we would find lots of nicer stuff that presumable they had preferred buyers for . . . ).

 

A colleague of mine at work used to work in an Estate Agents and had some interesting stories to tell about these people

 

It seemed to really matter to Blundells that we were not selling through them (ie we were not paying them any money) and they didnt seem to care about our needs. Even with you selling, you dont want an agent bahaving that way

 

To be honest none of the agents we interacted with was partcularly good, my wife used to go round the offices every now and then to pick up info on stuff they were not sending. And some of the agents used a card file system (eg Winkworth), so one office didnt know about houses with another office and it took ages to get stuff onto Rightmove, others were much more "electronicafied" (eg Halifax) and much quicker

 

If we had to sell in Sheffield in a buyers market I would look into the self promotion thing, but still wonder if Agents dont actually pay for themselves with better negotiated prices (unfortunately, I seem to be making an argument FOR Estate Agents . . . gulp) - if their negotiator impressed me I might use them, dont think I would care as much what their valuer or website was like

 

hope that helps

[Skink 10]

forgot to say

 

one place we saved money was by using on line solicitors

 

came in at half the money and they were both slick in execution and terrier like in chasing down completion

[tizhimi 10]

yep - second the online solicitors bit.

[saxondale 10]

I would'nt pay any upfront fees, no professional presents his bill until the job is done to your satisfaction. The market is so bad at present I would even try to knock 'em down to the minimum.

The boot is on the other foot now.

 

 

 

not true at all

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O/P - barras thompson 01246 432211

[ginger85 10]

i used blundells and thay were fab!

[rainbow sky 10]

We have just sold ours with Saxton Mee and they have been great throughout, no complaints, excellent brochures, we included floor plans on ours which I think helped, there website is great very easy to use (unlike Haybrook's).

We did have to pay our fees up front (£199) but we would have had to pay them in end anyway, so didn't really have a problem with that.

We didn't advertise ours in paper as I think most people use internet now.

 

Just a point, when you do a search on Rightmove you are shown a list of all houses, but when you click on a house and go to their brochure page you are normally transfered to the website of the estate agent selling the property. Just worth mentioning if you are considering choosing an agent who's website is not great.

 

Our house sold in just under 3 weeks, and I couldn't fault Saxton one bit.

 

Good Luck

[mosaic 10]

Hi, has any of you sold a house through the Hillsborough branches of any of these estate agents? I find your experience can vary a lot depending on what branch you use, even if it is the same estate agent.

[hennypenny 10]

I would go on rightmove and look at houses for sale with different agents, as some do a much better job on there than others, and I think it is one of the main places that buyers look. Some only include the bare facts and don't have pictures or a brochure to link to etc, so I would avoid those.

[mardybum 10]

I know this is an old thread but we're considering putting our house on the market with key2go and wondered if anyone had any personal experience of their 'start to finish' service.

 

We had their guy round the other day and we were impressed with him and the fees. After reading this thread we wondered if anyone did actually go with key2go and how they got on.

 

Cheers.

[RobHoar 10]

New key2go ltd. phone number is: 0114 247 8819 or email enquiries@key2go.co.uk

Edited June 23, 2010 by RobHoar