Relocation/estate agents

Has anyone used a relocation or estate agent to find a house/flat before they arrived in the UK?  Can you tell me about your experience?

Also, can anyone recommend a relocation/estate agent in West Yorkshire?  Specifically Leeds.  I feel kind of apprehensive about just picking one from the internet.

I just moved to Leeds from Belfast, and ended up making two house-hunting trips. After the places I've seen, I would never recommend renting someplace without seeing it first. Pictures do NOT tell you everything!

Agents tend to be a bit geographically specific. I'm near the University of Leeds, and am happy to recommend our agent, Central Properties. Others that seemed to deal in decent professional-type properties and seemed to be reputable and organized were Redbrick, Morgans City Living, and William H. Brown. David Moor is huge and has loads of properties, but every one we looked at was nasty, and I wasn't impressed with the agent we worked with.

Feel free to ask more questions or PM me!

i had a relocation agent. They can find you places without you there but to be honest its preferred if you go around with them. What the advantage is of the relocation agent is that they can ring up all the estate agents in the area and schedule all the viewings and whatnot then they can help negotiate your lease (getting things in like an increase of no more than 5% upon renewal linked to the property value so if it didn't go up they can't increase your rent, etc.). However, they can't make good houses magically appear unfortunately. Even with our real estate agent we got shown houses that didn't accept pets even though the estate agents knew we had pets. They just thought maybe it would work out. That was despite the best efforts of our relocation agent. We made a special trip here before the move to view rentals with our agent. We still went home without an accepted offer and no guarantee we'd get any of the houses we looked at. (You can't make landlords reply on time, if ever.)

In the end, it was extremely helpful but at a high cost. It was 2000 GBP and that was the cheapest one we found.

We used http://www.professionalrelocation.co.uk and dealth with Caroline. We liked her alot and only had one miscommunication (a quite big one) but it was both of our faults. I'd recommend going with her if you choose to have one. Just verify that you're on the same page with your specs before she finalizes viewings and you meet up with her. Our budget changed mid-dealings and we apparently didn't make it clear BUT she did wonderful last minute shuffling to accomodate our true budget and we still got to see a good amount of houses.

Doh, just realized you're not in London (I never read closely enough). You might find cheaper relocation agents outside of the capital.

One other thing to note is that relocation agents can help coordinate other information like schools and what not. They also may offer support and guidance throughout your stay here in the UK until you get settled into UK life.

Just do not use Foxtons, which are an estate agency all over England.  I repeat...do not use Foxtons.

Just do not use Foxtons, which are an estate agency all over England.  I repeat...do not use Foxtons.

SECONDED!  As the wife of a former estate agent, I can confirm they are the most hated agent in London (if not England!).

We used Foxtons.. their website is great, and we were hunting from Japan.  I'd say that using their website to help narrow down areas is a good idea, then find another agent that works in the area.  We didn't have any problems with them, but their contract is ridiculous (12 pages!) and they didn't show up for the inventory.