What is a buying agent and why you should use one?

The London and Home Counties or ‘Commuter-Belt’ regions are highly competitive property markets, with desirable homes rarely coming to the open market.

When these in-demand properties do become available, they attract multiple, ready, willing and able buyers, creating a huge amount of competition.

With this comes stress, uncertainty, invested time and often disappointment; not to mention often record-breaking agreed sales prices.

Traditionally, every buyer in the UK has fended for themselves when it comes to finding, bidding, and negotiating their next property purchase and it is a minefield of dealing with estate agents and often emotional sellers, all vying for you to pay the maximum amount of money they can possibly extract from you.

With strong competition from both domestic and international buyers, all looking for a similar property; it can be an exhausting and often disappointing undertaking. If you are selling a property at the same time, this can all be overwhelming.

Then there is the purchase process of surveys, conveyancing and due diligence, dealing with financial brokers and solicitors.

All this adds up to an often very unpleasant and time-consuming experience.

Buying/ Buyers agents, Property Finders or Search Agents are essentially one of the same thing, and offer services to Private Clients, acting as trusted advisors and brokers working exclusively on the buyers behalf. 

Buying agents represent the buyers’ best interests both financially and in relation to securing the best possible terms.

Historically, the UK property market has favoured the seller, with appointed estate agents representing vendors with the sole purpose of securing the highest possible price for the seller’s property. 

Whilst many countries around the world will be familiar with buying agents, in the UK, it is a relatively new service; however, it is becoming increasingly common for astute buyers to be represented by such companies.

Working exclusively with a buying agent such as OQO, alleviates many of the time-consuming steps in the process, including sourcing the right property in the right area, negotiating the best price on the buyers behalf and acting in the buyers best interests throughout the purchase process.

Discerning buyers wishing to purchase in the highly competitive London and Commuter-Belt property market are increasingly using buying agents to give them that competitive edge and get ahead of the competition. 

Most buying agents are independent and therefore have access to the entire market; whilst traditional estate agents are employed to sell you ONLY what they have been instructed to sell by their clients (sellers).

You will be encouraged to buy a property featured on their agency books as it’s all they have available to sell you.

OQO is wholly independent of any brand and therefore operate exclusively for the buyer without conflict of interest. We can source property from anywhere on or off-market.

We are often granted exclusive access to new instructions before they are released to the market, which gives us an advantage and access to prime properties ahead of the competition.

We can assist with the entire process from sourcing the required property, tailored to your needs and manage the entire purchase progression, or we can even assist at other stages such as negotiating with selling agents on your behalf.

OQO offer a single point of contact for all communication throughout the search and buying process.

Many of our clients wish to remain anonymous and therefore absolute discretion remains at the core of our operation and service.

In addition to client services for central London buyers, OQO also helps those looking further afield, extending their expertise to those commutable regions in London’s Home Counties and into overseas territories. 

OQO will always seek the best possible outcome for our clients, securing the property they desire at the very best possible price.