use same agent to buy and sell a house for you?

thebourke

should you use the same estate agent to buy and sell a house for you?
what are the advantages and disadvantages?

Dav010

thebourke wrote: »

should you use the same estate agent to buy and sell a house for you?
what are the advantages and disadvantages?

Do you use an EA to buy a house?

Baby01032012

He means the same agent the vendor used.

There’s no financial benefit. You go with the agent you think is best. Look at who the agents are in the area where you are selling your house, pick a couple, get them in to value it and give their pitch and go with the one you like best. See what they’ve sold in the area. Check their website for reviews.

ted1

Baby01032012 wrote: »

He means the same agent the vendor used.

There’s no financial benefit. You go with the agent you think is best. Look at who the agents are in the area where you are selling your house, pick a couple, get them in to value it and give their pitch and go with the one you like best. See what they’ve sold in the area. Check their website for reviews.

We saw a house we wanted. Basically told the agent she can sell our house. But we are only interested in selling if we can buy that house. So she could steer the seller our way and get commission from both houses , or sell to someone else and get only 1 sale

To me that’s the benefit

pocketse

I did this a few years ago. A house came on the market that I loved and I hadn’t really considered moving before that. I thought I’d have a better chance of getting my house on market and sale agreed before other one finished on bidding if the estate agent had a vested interest in selling 2 houses instead of just one.

I gather they did slow down the sale on the house I was bidding on as my house was sale agreed before the bidding heated up on house I wanted to buy. I got a great price for house I was selling, more than I expected. But estate agent was aware of this also and when it came to buying was aware of how far I could bid which wasn’t ideal!! (I could afford to move if I got x for my house. I ended up getting 35000 over X)

Estate agent was aware I was only moving to buy this specific house. If I didn’t get it I was staying where I was. Just me and one other person bidding one the house. I was only bidder for 2 months until after my house sold, there was another interested person who wanted to be ‘kept in the loop. ‘

Bidding started then and I was pushed to the limit of what I was willing to spend. I am not sure if I had a different agent acting on my sale would I have been pushed so far? Part of me is a little unsure if the other bidder existed at all. (Perhaps paranoia! ) They knew I wanted that house, they knew how much I could afford to spend!

Anyway that was my experience.

Pros.
If you’re under time pressure it might help as they can wait for you to sell.


Cons
They are well aware if your financial situation and what you can spend.

Estate agents are not your friends. When selling they will try to get highest price for your house. (Great) When buying they will try to get highest price for that house also. (Fair also) When using same agent they just have a lot more information on you and what you can actually afford.

Best of luck. It’s all fairly stressful stuff!!

Baby01032012

ted1 wrote: »

We saw a house we wanted. Basically told the agent she can sell our house. But we are only interested in selling if we can buy that house. So she could steer the seller our way and get commission from both houses , or sell to someone else and get only 1 sale

To me that’s the benefit

If the agent did that they would at the very least need to inform the vendor that the offer is connected and the agent is benefiting from the sale to you. Otherwise the agent would not be acting in the best interest of the vendor and subject to very large sanctions by its licensing body the psra.

PetitPois89

No benefit really apart from building rapport and trust

enrique66_35

It has pros and cons as other posters have mentioned but ask yourself, if you were just selling would this still be the agent you'd choose?

I was in a similar situation, after having my head melted in a previous move by dealing with two EAs I thought it a good idea to have the agent selling a house we liked to handle the sale of our house. It ended up backfiring as we were less than pleased with the service received in selling our house and ultimately went with a different house on the other side as well.

Marcusm

When selling my London flat before returning here, the agent pushed the buyer to allow them to sell his current apartment (same locality) even though he didn’t intend to sell it to buy mine. They “sold” it within a week but when the buyer pulled out 5 weeks later he also pulled out of mine as his new girlfriend fancied a suburban house. Pissed me off no end. They split up a month later and he came back but I was not interested in dealing with him again. Needless to say I had already moved the sale to a new agent too.

Baby01032012

Another point to make.

Would you really trust an agent if you’ve given him house to sell on basis that he push you ahead of other buyers on a house you’re looking to buy. What if he did same to you as vendor. Pushed a preferred buyer on basis that agent was getting another sale.

Baby01032012

<MOD SNIP>

Cash_Q

We put our house on the market with one of the "no sale no fees" EA companies. A couple of days later we saw they had another house up for sale new to market and requested a viewing. Attended the viewing with some other parties as standard. Two different agents from the company were dealing with each house.

We let it sit for a couple of weeks as we had not agreed a sale on our own house so thought we could not bid yet. Contacted the agent for the new house to see what the curent bid was (well below asking) who happily accepted our bid as she said she knew we were genuinely interested even though our house was still on the market. They knew we were desperate to sell and also knew we couldn't sell unless we had somewhere to go, so it made sense for them to make sure we found somewhere. I think us being on their books may have convinved our vendors we were genuine too.

Sold for 6k over asking, bought for 5k over asking, prices agreed July/August 2020 when sales all around us were starting to get going for a lot more. We weren't interested in waiting for a huge offer, we actually sold for 10k less than we originally thought we would accept as our minimum. We just needed to get out.

As poster above says yes maybe they were looking after our buyer as much as they were looking after us, but we got just about enough money to move on and got the house we wanted for the price we wanted. They definitely knew we were desperate to sell as we had neighbours from hell who had a fight in their front garden during one of the viewings. If they kept higher offers from us but also kept higher offers from our vendor then so be it, we got the house we wanted in the end. I find it hard to imagine they hid higher bids though as surely they'd be out for as much commission as they could get.