u/BandanasUnite2025

A very lovely colleague heard bad news about their wife last week and I‘m thinking through what they need to support them without prying too much.

I have let a very small number of folk know that I think they’ll be out for a while as their wife is poorly but I haven’t said what at all. It’s not my place to and I don’t want to breach their privacy at all. I thought I should let folk know so we can cover them and essentially say just don’t think about work-they have enough to deal with.

I’m also realising that my reaction may be affected by losing my Dad to cancer, it was all horribly sudden when we found out and then he passed in less than 2 months. I’m trying to think how to balance making sure work does’t bug them whilst realising it may help them to work at different points if that structure and background “noise” helps in anyway. I don’t know, it all sounds awful.

If anyone has been through this, may I ask what helped you?

We’re currently speaking with multiple estate agents to try and re market our house. We met with a large chain last Thursday and would value some advice about how to manage discussions with EA’s. They started saying they’d market it at £xk. We said we’d like to start at £25k less than that as we want to get momentum and interest as much as possible, have open houses etc. Whilst they were here they asked would we accept a certain amount (£50k less than we’d suggested starting at) if it was a cash price, we said no. They also implied we’d have issues as it has a small garden…even though they are all exactly the same on this estate. We got the distinct impression they were trying to anchor us to a lower price expectation.

We then emailed them to say we may go with them but wouldn’t want them to be making negative remarks about the property to potential buyers (re garden), that we’d want to start at our price point and not be driven down before trying it. (It’s been on the market before and we’re starting well under what it was before so are being realistic). Surprisingly we haven’t heard anything back… this may be for the best if they’re not able to sell it or thinking they can low ball it for a mate.
What is others experience of estate agents? Any do’s and don’t that you’d all advise?