Madi and Cathy were our first choice as they have the majority of the sales market in East Brisbane. Pros - good communication throughout the process, visible in the area, good advertising. Cons - On visiting our house they gave us an estimate way over what we expected and about $70k more than we eventually sold for, despite there being nothing picked up in the building inspection that would warrant a significant drop in price. I'm not sure if this was a deliberate tactic to ensure we signed with them, or simply a poor estimate on their part. On auction day we gave them a reserve $80k less than their estimate for the house, which we were clear was our absolute minimum. Despite this we were still put under a lot of pressure during the auction to drop our reserve price. Eventually Madi did some good negotiating and we got $15k over reserve. Overall our house sold at auction in 4 weeks and we were reasonably happy with the price. The tactics used were probably standard real estate tactics but left a bad taste.
