Unfortunately, I had a really bad experience buying my first home with my partner. To begin with, for all the viewings we did with Miles & Barr, the estate agents seemed to know absolutely nothing about the properties except what was on the listing. No information about previous works carried out, age of electrics or boiler, etc. They did offer to contact the vendors with any questions we had but we travelled well over 2 hours for the viewings and it was disappointing that they didn't have this information already - surely we aren't the only buyers asking. We put an offer in for a property which was listed as CHAIN FREE - the first words on the listing. Once our offer was accepted (which ended up being another whole back and forth - apparently the vendor had already communicated a minimum she would accept and yet M&B let us offer lower than this which was obviously rejected), the following day we received a call from our sales progressor informing us that the vendor was looking for a property to purchase and port the mortgage over to. Excuse me, what? The property was listed as chain free. Now, M&B claim that they knew absolutely nothing about the vendors intentions to port the mortgage however also told us she'd been looking since November 2023 - 2 months before we'd even viewed the property. Additionally, it is your responsibility as the estate agents to be absolutely certain of the intentions of both vendor and buyer. The time in between our offer being accepted and completion on the property was, in my opinion, inexcusably long, considering we were chain free first time buyers who had had an offer accepted on a supposedly chain free property. At one point, the vendor even threatened to put the property back on the rental market - all because she couldn't find a house she wanted to buy! We didn't receive any support from our sales progressor and felt that they allowed the ball to be in the vendor's court. After several months of waiting for her to port her mortgage and only having a few weeks left on our rental lease, we said we would pull out if she hadn't found a house by a certain date. Suddenly, she'd had an offer accepted and was ready to proceed. Also, she discovered she wasn't actually able to port her mortgage (probably because the house we purchased was an ex-rental and she was purchasing a residential home) so was suddenly in a rush to complete so she could move forward with her own purchase. Why did M&B not tell her that she couldn't port a buy to let mortgage to a residential property? This is basic knowledge and led to months and months of delays for us, plus a few weeks of homelessness once our lease ended. Not that M&B cared when we told them, of course - they attempted to empathise by reminding me that they wouldn't get paid until the property sold, so they wanted it to complete too. We finally bought and moved into the property (being met with a whole host of issues from the house being empty for a year, of course), and on move-in day, our keys were handed to us in a plain white envelope along with a keyring with a fat joke on it. Thanks! Not quite the celebratory start to the day we were hoping for. In general, I would personally avoid buying and selling through Miles and Barr at all costs in the future, and hope that I do not have to deal with them any further. Very disappointing as so many people have great things to say about them, but I feel that I spoke to every single person in that office and had a terrible service with every one. Yes, the vendor was tricky, but M&B didn't help the situation at all.