Hiring Estate Agents - Tips? Costs? Experiances?

pencil

Hi there,

We are selling our Dublin house (North Inner City) and I am wonder does anyone have any tips for hiring/choosing estate agents?

We need to have the house sold by late August - what can I do to try and assure this deadline is met?

It's our first time selling so any advise or recommendations (based on experience) gladly received!


After our recent 'experiances' with this 'profession' when buying - I want to be 'on the ball'.


Cheers.
P

brianmcd

Hi Pencil - one thing to bear in mind is that activity basically stops in the summer so you should try to have a sale agreed no later than end of May.

I've used several agents on this side of town if you are in the general area of Phibsboro / Glasnevin / Santry / Drumcondra send me a PM and I can provide some detailed experiences of the various agents.

As a rule I would strongly suggest that you DO NOT USE GWD, but after that you need to ensure that the agent is signed up with myhome.ie. Different agents seem to have differing strategies ie. Sherryfitz tend to go with a high price whereas HOK tend to pitch a low price to "pack 'em in".

As I say, I've bought and sold through a good few of them and would be glad to share some of my experiences if you can provide more details especially on the area you are selling in.

Brian

pencil

Cheers brianmcd,

PM send - house in Phibsboro just of NCR near the Mater.

Any help will be great - never done this before.

Johnny_Fontane

I'm looking to buy in that area.

What are you selling?

PDelux

On the subject of estate agents,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4826444.stm

pencil

Did anyone watch the program (relating to this article) last night on BBC1 - unbelieveable stuff!

"Price Reduction Hour"

Thanks for bring that to my attention PDelux

PDelux

I didnt actually get to watch it but I'm wondering if these types of things happen in Dublin too. I suppose they do but I havent heard anything.

If people have bad experiences, like the comments on the BBC link, i think people should post about them to let others know...

pencil

We recently were bidding on a house. It was Friday and we were the top bidders. There had been quite a bit of bidding activity for a week between 3 sets of bidders.

The estate agent in question wanted to "close by Saturday". We spent the weekend as the top bid with our fingers crossed. I rang the estate agent on Monday thinking we must have been successful, only to find out the house was sold and "he was so busy, he forgot about us". He was of course full of apologies etc but it was obvious that someone was sorted out.

Needless to say, every single opportunity I get (or anyone in my immediate family gets) to recant this story to in full detail is gladly taken. People like to talk about house so you get plenty of opportunity. I'm on a one man mission to hurt this mans sales - Frankly it's all he deserves! He is a small auctioneers in a smallish town so maybe this will make him either a: improve his memory in future or b: be more honest.

nesf

PDelux wrote:

On the subject of estate agents,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4826444.stm

Tbh, I'm not in the least bit shocked. High pressure commission based sales produces some nasty stuff, regardless of what's being sold.