You get what you pay for Moving house can be extremely stressful, but it doesn't need to be. Mary finds out why you should stick to a local agent
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be getting a refund. This is when most of us would have to go and lie down in a darkened room. Death, divorce and house moving are classed as some of the most stressful moments in our life, and unfortunately they can sometimes coincide. Buying and selling a house is up there on the top of the list of stress related moments in your life, and most of us do it more than once. Many of us numerous times. And we do not want to experience that dreaded scenario I’ve just written about, but sadly many of us do. And very interestingly, it’s more often than not a case of ‘once bitten, twice shy’ if you have ever tried selling through an online process as you quickly find out you get what you pay for. So initially you pay less with your fee but realistically it’s probably going to cost you more in solicitor’s fees, complications and a much slower transaction. Can your stress levels really cope with that? Sowden Wallis have had a high profile in Stamford since Emma Sowden and Tom Wallis set up the business in May 2014. They had worked together previously as estate
agents and when the company they worked for was bought by a large chain they decided to go it alone. ‘We didn’t want to work for a large chain of estate agents,’ says Emma. ‘We wanted to be independent so we could make our own decisions and offer the type of service we wanted to; the large corporate world wasn’t for us.’ And it’s paid off. Sowden Wallis are rightly proud of their reputation for excellent customer service. And because of this reputation they get a lot of referrals and repeat business. Basically they will hold your hand from the minute you instruct your sale to the moment you hand your keys over to the new buyer. As Emma said: ’we don’t get paid until the money is in the bank so it is in our interest - as well as the seller's - to make sure the sale goes through as smoothly as possible. This is what we are here for. Many problems that occur in a chain are usually easily sorted by a few phone calls. We usually know the solicitors and other agents in the chain so are on top of what is going on. You really do need a ‘human being’ to sort things out, keep the
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ELLING YOUR HOUSE is easy isn’t it? You find an online seller, pay your money up front, usually just a bit shy of £1,000; take a few photos, they put it on rightmove and Bob’s your uncle, you have an offer in a couple of weeks. Job done. But it’s not quite as simple as that as many of you who have sold a house know. If it’s in a chain things can go wrong, sellers and buyers can have meltdowns and pull out; searches and surveys can show up real horrors, or what would initially appear to be real horrors, so you lose your buyer; solicitors can go AWOL just when you need some really quick answers or the chain just grinds to a halt and no one seems to want to do anything about it. And the list goes on and on and on. So you ring your online agent for help, but they’re not interested. You are speaking to someone in a call centre and they’ve already seen the colour of your money so you can clear off and sort it out yourself, they’ve got someone else to get a fee off. Hard luck if your sale falls through, you’ve already paid your fee and you won’t
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