I flipped between the two and went direct to sellers. I thought EA would if anything want to protect their commission and so hold out for the higher price.100% go via the EA, it impacts their commission so they need to know. Additionally they have secured the sale and want it to proceed so will potentially use some influence to encourage the seller to aceppt.
Anyway, the seller won't take a dime less than asking which is fair enough and he just apologised and said ive got a couple weeks and if i cant make it work he will go back on the market. The same day as our offer he had another which was just over asking but he went with us as we are FTB etc. I can believe it, its a competitive area.
Just need to decide how to do this really. I stupidly locked up a big chunk of money in a LISA which I can't use but it would kill me to suffer the 25% loss.