Both houses I’ve bought I only got because the agent called me when they came in, since I was registered as being interested in a certain category. The smaller agencies were best for that. we were lucky to get the place we’re living in now – it literally was on the market in the afternoon, we saw it at 5pm, put an offer in at 6pm, and were accepted at 7pm. Someone else tried to offer at 9am the next day (all this before it was advertised anywhere) – they even tried to gazump us in fact, but luckily for us the sellers were the kind of solid, principled people who say that once they’ve agreed to something, that’s that, so we still got it at the price we’d offered. It’s good to know there are people with ethics still around, I still have a ton of respect for that couple.