Hello,
I can sympathise! We have had a difficult ride selling our house in SW18. It is a lived in house, and with it has some minor problems which need sorting by someone who doesn't have a toddler petrified of anything that resembles a workman or machine! Apart from that it is well presented. We have had a lot of interest and an offer every 3 weeks or so, and all at the same amount regardless of what our asking price was at the time. The big problem we faced was the offers going forward. I think this is where the "grown up" agents will earn their fee. The due diligence on the potential buyers is key.
We had what seemed to be a good offer, and we accepted and stopped marketing and then started to proceed on the purchase of the house we wanted to buy. 2 weeks later, after I had forked out a considerable sum to get a homebuyers report and secure finance, I chased the agent to see how the buyer was progressing and after a bit of foot shuffling, they called and said it had fallen through due to the buyer not being able to raise the finance. After a bit of digging, it turned out that they hadn't really qualified the offer financially and the potential buyer was probably living in the la la land of yesteryear when the Banks would lend you as much as you wanted.
On the flip side, we were trying to buy a house through Hamptons and they were on our case daily and from what I can gather seem to do a lot more work once the offer has been accepted. We eventually stuck with the same agents, and I just took over vetting buyers myself, and when we got our current offer, I had the buyers full life story and went through their financial position myself. We are ready to exchange on our house now, but had to find a new house to buy as all the time wasted on offers falling through cost us the house we originally wanted. These were a pretty big agent and they certainly got people through the door, but I got the feeling that our house wasn't ever a real priority until we threatened to pull the plug on them. I will begrudgingly pay the 1.5% fee, but certainly not with any champagne and flowers.
I think you should go for one of the well known agents, but just make sure they are not marketing a lot of similar properties, or indeed, a lot of properties which would earn them a larger fee as I think this affects how much effort they put into selling your house.
Good luck - it's such stressful time.
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