House buying process in UK

[logan]

Hi Guys,
I'm heading home for December and want to buy a house while I'm there (retirement investment, get back on the housing ladder). I have one week to look at houses before I hit the road for 2 weeks (including 1 week at the Tour de France - go Lance!), and then will be back in one place for the last week.

Can anyone give me advice on how to deal with real estate agents in the UK, and the process over there? Here in the US, I could email a realtor and say "I have one week to find a house for 150k, here's what I'm looking for, help me find the right house", and they'd do exactly that. The prospect of making commission on a pretty-much guaranteed sale would motivate them.

Could I do the same thing in the UK, and would it work? Could I just find a real estate company in the Chester area and set up a week of looking at houses? I get the impression that UK realtors can be pretty useless, and even downright unscrupulous when it comes to negotiations. I also seem to remember from my only house-buying experience in the UK (many years ago) that it is the SELLER'S agent who shows a house - so I'd need to contact lots of different agents to look at different houses. Am I remembering correctly?

Any pointers on resources (books, Web sites) greatly appreciated. I've done some looking around and have found Rightmove and a few other sites, but I trust the folks here to give me some good, honest advice based on personal experience.

Thanks

[malachi]

Hi Logan,
We bought our first house 5 years ago and started off by ringing up about 5 different estate agents and asking them to send out info on houses in the area we were looking for a within our price range. We then had to set up viewings to fit around the owners and our work commitments, which did prove difficult at times! There are so many estate agents now that I wouldn't advise just using one in particular. Rightmove is a good website to start with though as it lists adverts from many different agents, so that could be a good place to start.
Cheers