Well that was an interesting but somewhat confusing day yesterday. During the morning, with no contact from the Estate Agent I called the manager. I asked him why it had gone so quiet after he promised me more viewings. He said they were doing everything they could, they were calling people and circulating to other office and were working hard on it. I mentioned to him that we may well engage another Estate Agent to go on the sole/joint agency we had agreed with them. There was nothing they could say about this as they had offered this at the same rate. He asked us to give him until Saturday before doing so, I agreed, knowing Helen was ringing a new agent at lunchtime for him to come and see us on Saturday.
The Agent we were going to contact was one used by quite a few of our friends, some who new the owner very well and spoke highly of the service. Anyhow at lunchtime Helen rings me and says he is not free on Saturday but can come today. I saw no reason why not and arranged for him to come round.
He arrived and we had a chat. Basically what they can offer is that they have office all over North London and find most clients move from inner London out to the outer boroughs when they want to upgrade but cannot afford where they are. He also said that he had sold bigger properties along our road for a lot less than our original 250k and now "offers over 240K" asking price. He thought 230k was more realistic. A pattern was forming here, following yesterdays blog where two other respected people said we were asking too much. Thinking as well about some friends who moved a year ago from a bigger property near us with bigger garden and extension, they sold for £250K, originally our first Agent had put them on at £270K and they reduced. It appears the cowboys over inflate the price.
So the new agent said he would market our property, on the same joint/sole agreement rate as our current agent, he said he would also do floor plans, the other two did not offer these. He said he normally charges £60 for them but would do it for free, sales talk again possibily but it could be because of the people we know who knows him. Floor plans are important as it show people lay out and rooms in comparison to others before they agree to come. Thinking about it when we have been looking on right move, we often skip properties without floor plans as you do not know how the propertry is laid out.
Anyhow in total he spent an hour with us, so much longer than the other to, he did not promise loads of viewings but promised to send the right people. He also said he would prefer to put it on at £235k but as we had already reduced twice it would be better to put on at £239,995. I asked him to delay until Saturday as that is what I had agreed to our Agent, he said by the time he had everything together, it would be Saturday morning anyway. He then left and I felt quite positive.
Then it all went made, I then started to receive call after call from our current agent. At the end of the day we had 5 viewings scheduled in and two more waiting confirmation. Was this a response to my saying we were getting someone else involved, who knows.
So we have 3 booked in for today and tomorrow I will contact them to tell them they are now in a joint agency position and hopefully now we will find a buyer.
What it has done though is made us look at the figures we have. We think we can still afford to move, even if we went down to 225K (this was my original estimate for valuation last year) but it would probably mean that the detached house is not an option now. However the main objective is to move to a bettter area and for Helen not to have to work so hard. So come please lets have some offers in.
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