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Not sure about the potential issues, but if turns out to be 'safe' it seems like a good opportunity to negotiate a lower rate with them, even if just for this one viewing.
cjr-
Fair point, but not sure if that's something we'll try. Although I'm generally of the opinion that estate agents' fees are stupidly high, these guys are about as low as it gets round here, plus the only reason that they're able to bring this potential buyer to us is the work that they did last year in preparing the marketing material for the house and having it in their minds when trying to find something for this buyer.
ffm
OK, quick question: last year we tried, unsuccessfully, to sell our house. We gave our agents notice at the start of December and our aim is to engage a different agent from April to try again (original agents didn't seem to do anything wrong, just didn't find the right person as our house backs onto a railway line, which puts a lot of people off). A couple of weeks back our original agent contacted us to say that they had a buyer who they thought would be super-keen on our house; he had looked at very similar properties to ours but everything he described about what he didn't like about them pointed to the fact that he'd very likely make us an offer. On that basis, we said that they could show him the brochure for our house. On the back of that, he's keen to view it very soon for which we would need to re-engage the original agent. They've drawn up a contract for a period of zero-weeks, with a specific note that it's only for this one-off viewing. If the potential buyer doesn't make an offer within a couple of weeks then we'll move onto a different agent.
Is there any risk to doing this? The possible upside is finding a buyer without having to re-market and increase our chances of moving on before the extended stamp-duty holiday ends. I'd just like to identify if there is a downside that I'm missing.