Owning your own home

Can anyone recommend me a good estate agent for the sale of a flat in Hackney?

Edit: also doesn’t charge a bomb in fees.

Nested were really good when I sold mine in 2019.

Listing to completion in 7 weeks. They also sold stevo’s place quickly too.

Presentation is always good - this was mine
https://nested.com/for-sale/SE10/Farmdal­e-Road/40cl79w1

Plus the valuations are helpful and they'll do a bit of research and a rough valuation on properties you're thinking of buying.

If you do sign up then they’ll knock £250 off the fees using a the referral. I’d get some money too :)

https://nested.com/?refcode=Uaihdu_RWRQ

I really like that. £700k you reckon?

I haven't seen the home report but I've kept track of similar places to ours and think it's probably right ball park maybe £15-20k more? It's quite a rare thing, there was a mews house 18 months ago which was bigger but needed a lot more work and sold for £780k.

I would probably be ok paying £720k for it, in the knowledge that in the last 2 years there haven't been many places like it, close to town, south facing garden, garage, options for a nice extension.

Stirling Ackroyd in Shoreditch did mine and my (now) wife's flats, and by marketing them in the city they got us both record money for the area. Mine went for top whack and Mrs Q's went for crazy sealed bids nonsense over and above top whack.

Just had a look at the outside, seems nice- will view.

However I'm massively suspicious about the whole situ and feel like we're being squeezed. If the fourth offer on our purchase had been higher than ours, wouldn't the agent have invited us to negotiate rather than jump to best & final? Another concern is that b&f is so aggressive it may turn off some of our prospects - one has already cancelled a viewing.

From my experience you are right to be suspicious. Been to best and finals a few times now with some really dubious scenarios. Once we were bidding against one other couple. They were cash buyers (so generally favourable) but we were the highest bidder. They asked us to bid again because there wasn't much in it. So we did and they went for the cash buyers anyway. Bled another £8k out of the cash buyers in the process.

Similar thing happened another time except the cash buyers were already the highest bidder (cue speil from estate agent about us being first time buyers and how attractive that was...) and they wanted to give us another go. Obvz they went for the cash buyer anyway.

tl;dr - There are some really cunty estate agents out there.

I think to be an estate agent you need to be cunty to start with.

I'm not a massive fan of estate agents but to complain when they work for their client to get a higher offer seems a bit off, it is a large part of why they exist.

Bigger commission and all.

I'm not opposed to them working to get a higher price, but the tactics are intentionally manipulative which I do think is worthy of complaint.

For example, on further questioning this morning the agent disclosed there were only 3 offers including ours. So either he's thick, or Friday's fourth offer didn't exist.

If we'd had been invited to negotiate in more normal or less opaque circumstances there wouldn't be an issue.

For example, on further questioning this morning the agent disclosed there were only 3 offers including ours. So either he's thick, or Friday's fourth offer didn't exist.

Sound normal; they can either be somewhat dishonest or very dishonest.

A friend had view a flat (he now brought), Foxton claim there have been nearly dozen of viewing and offer being put in, which none of them happen as it been in the market for half a year.

long story short; got the flat £20,000 under asking price and accepted straight away.

Might give them a call sounds amazing! Ive got nested coming around tomorrow thanks to @duncs recommendation. The whole process of buying and selling is such a faff.

Check this place out, it's amazing.

Really nice that, under offer from yourself?

A bit inconvenient if you have bedroom 2 and want to go to the loo during the night.

A Porsche would look great on that gravel drive. Although an XJS would look even better, which is good given the amount of time it would likely be sat broken down and rusting away.

I wouldn't change a thing about that bathroom. Except the carpet and the accessibility rail.

I don't know Liberton but it's not far from the Hermitage of Braid and Blackford Hill which is a nice walk. Although town is an hour plus on foot from there.

It is a stunner.

Tado wizards: I want a smart thermostat, replacing existing hot water and heating control for system with cylinder, ideally HomeKit enabled. I'm fairly certain I'm after the wireless smart thermostat kit...

I seem to remember a bit of uncertainty around the smart TRVs. Are the Tado smart TRVs realistically giving me anything extra or do they just do the same thing as a normal TRV but you can do it from your phone?

Really nice that, under offer from yourself?

Sadly not, and the way it works up here is that you can't come in with a higher offer (or so I am told).

So I have to wait to see if it falls through or completes - be interesting to see (if it completes) what it goes for.

That's why it's got a sink.

It's too far out from town anyway imho. But it is nice. And if you worked at the university king's buildings campus it would be ideal.

Seems odd that Bedroom 4, presumably the staff quarters, has a bigger bathroom than the master.

They do morr, in that they control the boiler too, not just the radiator.

A plain TRV controls the temperature when the boiler is on, and is redundant when the boiler is off.

A smart TRV will call the boiler to turn on when it needs to.

Smart TRVs effectively create separate heating zones.

excellent - i hoped they might but wasn't convinced reading their blurbs. Hopefully makes steady temps (and some savings?) possible. Thank you!

Yeah that sounds about right. I think we're going to stick to our first offer.

Current situ is that we have an ~4hr window between best & final deadline on our sale and the best & final deadline on our purchase, and we're having to remind the agent to verify proof of funds for the highest offer on our sale since that offer is cash and we've apparently one go at getting it right.

I think we'll try selling on Facebook Marketplace next time