When is the best time to call an estate agent?
On Saturday I was walking close to my home in Birmingham and I spotted a large house, which I thought would be perfect as a multi-let property. I had seen the property for let and sale on www.rightmove.co.uk a few weeks before. This is a big clue that the owner may be interested in purchasing option, whereby you rent a property for a number of years and then eventually purchased it. As the property in question was still available, I thought it was worth a call to the agent to see if there was a potential deal.
I had meant to call about the property weeks ago but just have not had the chance, and so thought I would call there and then. As it was a Saturday, I suppose I should not have been surprised that the person I spoke to didn’t really know anything about the property. The lady who answered the phone very nice and polite but couldn’t actually offer any help at all. I suppose I should not really have been surprised by this, as I know that Saturday is not generally a good time to call, as the office is usually manned by part-time staff.
So this raises the question, of when is the best time to contact an estate agent or letting agent. This is a question that I am often asked and so I thought I would answer it for you here.
Monday is not a great day to contact agents, as very often they are busy following up from viewings at the weekend. Friday is also a bad day to call is usually they arranging lots of viewings for the weekend. Tuesday is a bit of a catch up day, which means the best days to speak to a letting or estate agent, when looking for deals, is probably Wednesday or Thursday. On these 2 days, agents will have more time to speak you.
Then there is an art to being taken seriously and not binned as a time waster as so many amateur investors are. You need to build rapport with the agent and get them to like and trust you in just the same way you would when dealing with a motivated seller.
Kind regards
Simon Zutshi
Founder, property investors networkA
2 comments
Agree with all your comments re timing Simon – I have also found that a personal “drop by the office” chat brings even more results than a phone call. Yes, it does take more time but is usually well worth the effort and the whole body language communication tells you much more than you can get over the phone.
Simon. Saturday staff do tend to be different from the weekday staff. We arrange viewings Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mostly for the reasons you give above. What amazes me is the viewers they send out to accompany us. They aren’t negotiators, don’t know anything about the property, either its price or rental value. However, some have been doing it for so long it has started to rub off on them and once you get talking to them they open up like a flower and give you gold. Only yesterday, they showed us 2 cracking deals that hadn’t reached rightmove so we were able to get in and make offers quickly. Chritmas is coming as is the bad weather and the agents will want to earn some commissions for buying presents and having a great New Year so get out there and make offers.
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