Finding a house should be easy – Rightmove, for example, has over 300 houses listed across the Kent and Sussex Wealds between £1.5m and £2.5 million.
Property portals might offer a massive choice, but buyers face a real challenge in sorting the wood from the trees when it comes to defining those that offer their key requirements (acreage, peace and quiet, potential for alteration, secondary accommodation and condition being obvious examples). Even then, portals can only give part of the picture – for example, how long has a property been for sale (‘Just available’ can conceal a house that have just been ‘rested’ for a month or two, having been marketed, on and off, for a year or more….
As experienced buying agents we are constantly tracking houses likely to suit our clients (both on and off the market). Our knowledge can be incisive as to the advantages/shortcomings of a particular location (for example access to the best schools in Tunbridge Wells, commuting from Wadhurst, the better lanes in Mayfield or the protection of the Green Belt around Sevenoaks), etc.).
Our personal knowledge of key selling agents gives us access to ‘off-market’ properties (those whose owners are reluctant, in a hesitant market, to actively promote their properties); we will have also have tracked properties withdrawn from the market over the last year or two, where owners might be open to a discreet approach from a purchaser.
When a suitable house has been identified, we can rely on our database (of nearly 19,000 properties, built up over the last 25 years) to tell us when it was last sold, how much for, the changes that have been made by the current owners (and whether the necessary planning or Listed Building consents were achieved!) – and the values achieved in the sale of comparable houses in the area.
So using us as their search agent, buyers can rest easy in the knowledge that, if there is a house that might suit their requirements (on or off the market), we will be ‘on the case’, previewing the property if the client can’t view themselves and providing a realistic precis as to its advantages and disadvantages.
