Oh to be an Estate Agent!

Well, they came. 2 Estate Agents. Chamberlains were first.....he was OK, and said he really liked the place (we expected nothing less), but he used so many cliches, and little terms, and thought he was really funny..............he wasn't!!! However, he did say the standard of the interior would rival a semi in the area, which was a definite positive. he told us off road parking could add £5k to the property. Then came a girl from Dixons. She has supposedly won awards for her work...not sure what they were!! She kept referring to the house as ex-council and as such, the perceptions of buyers would be that it isn't a nice area and therefore we wouldn't get as much as the same house in another area. We were confused. We didn't know it was ex-council, and it certainly isn't in an area you'd think was ex-council if you saw it. She told us she'd help us find a better house in the future with more potential......we'd hit a ceiling price very quickly, as it's ex-council....blah, blah blah!! She also told us off road parking would make no difference to sale price. Hmmmmm.

When she'd gone, we talked about it more and we agreed we thought it had been owned privately since being built. We spoke to the neighbours and they agreed. A local guy named Matthews had owned 12 of the houses in the row, since 1944 (from Birmingham and Midland Estates who built them in 1937) I looked up the deeds when we got home to check. So this has obviously blown our confidence in Dixons amazing staff! Blooming cheek telling us we'd made a mistake buying the house and making such an effort with it!!!

Anyway, the upshot is that both agents gave similar valuations, slightly under what we would like to get, but not far off, so we were quite happy. (However, would not being ex-council mean a £5k increase in value??!!)

Tonight we've shown a family round. The parents are looking to buy a pad for their kids. The daughter came with them, but the 30 year old son is too lazy to look!! However, the Dad scrutinised the place and 'interviewed' Craig in detail about the work he'd done etc. On leaving he said he'd let the kids have his house and he'd move in there!! They are going to get the lad round before they move forward, but still positive. Girl really likes it, so lets hope she works on her Dad!

So, just the back garden to finish sorting. Need to get up the rest of the ugly paving slabs to unearth the rest of the crazy paving below, and clean that up. The front garden will be dictated by the response of viewers really.

In an ideal world, we'd love someone to say, knock a couple of thousand off the asking price, and they'll do the driveway themselves........maybe we're just being lazy!!!