Our flat with the new JP Brimelow sign out front

Just one week after switching estate agents, we have not only had our first viewing but had a counter offer accepted by our prospective buyer.

We’re gob smacked. It’s all happened so fast. We’re not getting too excited just yet as the offer is still subject to survey and exchange of contracts but we’ve taken a massive first step.

It’s also a fantastic result given we’ve only just changed estate agents. We had been with Halifax for just over two months and hadn’t had a single viewing (the prospective buyer mentioned in out last post pulled out at the last moment) and they seemed to have run out of ideas about how to generate intesest. We’d also been passed between three different staff at their office and had had almost no feedback on the property at all.

We’d taken a punt with Halifax who hooked us with a great sales pitch but just failed to deliver – they were also at a disadvantage being based in an adjoining suburb – and the South Manchester market is pretty fickle like that.

Bad news for Halifax

So we took the decision to sack them. And it seems to have paid off – very quickly.

Ironically, in the last two weeks of our notice period we received the letter above from the owners of the Withington branch of the Halifax informing us that we’d need to find an alternative agent as they were closing the branch. Pretty good timing that.

We came very close (in our desperation) to renting the flat out and taking an additional mortgage instead – and should the deal fall through it’s an option that’s still on the table.

But we decided to try out the Didsbury-based agents (who we’d ruled out before for being a bit snobbish) and settled on JP Brimelow (as they have the biggest shopfront and the most online reach). Within a week of signing up they had lined up our first viewing. And later that day the first offer came in – about £9000 below our asking price. We were advised to accept from both the agent and Jayne’s folks.

Despite that we took a punt and came in with a slighter higher counter offer. A couple of hours later we got the call – it had been accepted.

So, it’s all in the hands of the solicitors now. And hopefully the survey will vindicate all of the structural repairs we undertook during the renovations.

It does mean we can go ahead and make offers ourselves but that’s another post… and another game altogether.