I am looking to sell my house and have spoken to a few estate agents. They would all like to try and sell the house on an ‘exclusive’ basis, which in principle I am fine with. If I just go with one, they are more likely to put effort into it to get it sold.

My question is though, how long should I give them to sell before I think about switching to another one. We need to sell the house as quickly as possible!

Any thoughts – greatly appreciated!

To be honest, in the current market, I would try and go joint-agency. Yes, they would prefer that you went sole! But most agents would rather compete with others and therefore receive a higher fee if they sell it, than not have it on their books at all.

I’m not entirely sure that they will put less effort in if you go joint – if anything, they would put more effort in because they know they have to compete. Competition is important between estate agents – each one wants to be the biggest and best in the area. It would be very unusual for them to think "Oh well, we’ll let them have this one, we’ve got enough on our books anyway!"

What I would do though is if you want to start out with one agent, make sure that you are free to go elsewhere. Make sure you aren’t obligated to, e.g., 3 months with one agency.

I would suggest starting with one agent (not necessarily the one that values your place the highest – but the one who doesn’t seem to be giving you the gift of the gab) – then give it 4 weeks.

It all very much depends on your location and type of property as to how many viewings you should expect. If it helps, we put our 2 bedroom ground floor apartment in Surrey on the market last September. They all thought it would sell straight away. We went with 3 agents to start with. Sole fee for all agents was about 1%. Joint fee was only 1.25%, so we went for it.

In my experience, it’s better to have a few agents on the case. You’ll get more people through your door. We were so glad we went joint when the agency we initially thought were the best turned out to be the worst. They hardly made any effort after the first two weeks. One agency continued to get us viewings month after month. We still hadn’t sold by Christmas, so we got Foxtons involved too! Their fees were hefty, but they got people through the door! Finally, we accepted an offer just after Christmas through one of the other agents and eventually completed last month.

As others have said – not to be pessimistic – have months in mind, not weeks. Estate agents make you feel like you have the most desirable property in the area. Don’t set yourself up for a fall. Work out a contingency plan – i.e. ‘What will happen if we still haven’t sold in 6 months?’ A good plan in the current climate is to consider renting after you complete. It’s much less risky and messy than trying to combine buying and selling. It’s heartbreaking when you find your dream home; only to lose it because your buyer pulls out. If you considered renting for a little while, you’d have much more flexibility, be in a much better buying position, and would save money every month because like-for-like, renting is usually cheaper than a mortgage. It’s taken about 7 months to sell our house – from putting it on the market to completion. We had an offer on the first day – his buyer pulled out; so he pulled out. We had other situations like this along the way. There were low offers, accepted offers and all kinds of hiccups. But be patient, don’t get your hopes up too much, and hang in there!

If you haven’t had any offers at all after 6 weeks, consider getting a home stager (or honest friend) to look at your home.

So in conclusion, I would definitely go joint-agency if you can. If not, I would tell the agent you choose that you will give them 1 month to get an offer made – after that point, you may consider going joint-agency. This should make them want to push your home before other agents get their hands on it. Oh and if they agree but state a joint-agency fee of anything more than 1.5%, laugh in their face!!! (Unless you live in London, in which case, 3% would be about right)

Good luck!

xx Emmie