Estate Agent Help

Great response from Kimmy.

I would add one further point. When we had agents showing us round, we would sometimes drive past a town, and we would ask "what is that town like?"

The agent would say something like "you won't want to buy there ... it is an awful place".

Since moving here, we have found that some of those "awful places" are really quite nice, so we suspect that the agent was diverting us away from them simply because he/she had no reciprocal arrangements with agents selling in those areas.

So ... if you are interested in any particular town, pick an agent in that town.

Best wishes

Many thanks for the replies and for confirming what we thought - we have inadvertently registered and will need to view the properties with them.

We've met 3 lawyers and chosen 1 so no problem there.

We may have experienced what your talking about kelvin, one agent who responded to my enquiry told me that the "pink and yellow" or "Battenberg" houses which are quite common in the area suffer from dampness because they are badly built. Now they may well do but it sounded odd and I checked - he didn't have any of those on his books but sent me a list of what he had.

Looking forward to viewing......

Re the damp thing ... you probably know that most houses here have concrete frames with block infill walls (and a decorative render or tile finish).

Some houses have single skin block infill walls (not a cavity wall construction).

A few months ago I was chatting with some people who live in a single skin house - they had condensation in winter, and preferred not  to situate furniture up against their external walls. They used a dehumidifier.

This seems to be borne out by Leroy Merlin (the equivalent of B&Q) who seem to sell lots of dehumidifiers during the winter months. 

I have never been inside a Battenburg house, and I don't know if this comment is applicable - just another thing to think about when buying a house.