How To Choose An Estate Agent

How should I choose an estate agent?

Choosing an estate agent certainly is always difficult. The majority of people will simply look at the price they're given and the fee they're given, but there's a lot more to it than that. What you principally want to check is how many buyers they have for properties in your price range . If you look on their website and they've got a lot of properties to sell in your price range, the chances are they'll have lots and lots of buyers. That's really what you want to be looking for, an estate agent who's got plenty of buyers in your price range.

Are recommendations important?

Certainly, if you're trying to choose your estate agent, obviously, a recommendation is a very good thing. If you see a neighbor that's had a board up in the street and has a "sold by" board up quite quickly, go and knock on the door very quickly afterwards and find out whether that person had a good experience with their estate agent. It's a people business, so most of the good estate agents that you interview will do much the same sort of thing to sell your property. It's about the person you're dealing with. If you think you can trust the person you're dealing with, chances are, that's the person to go for.

What are the advantages of choosing a big chain agent?

The reason for choosing a big chain of estate agents would be if you've got a property which really does need to be advertised nationally; something very big, something rather unusual, something that might appeal to foreigners, that sort of thing. But traditionally, we find that most properties are bought by people who are looking in the area, and therefore you're probably normally best served by perhaps having two: one local, one national. But you can choose accordingly.

Should I go for the agent who suggests the highest asking price?

I'm afraid to say at the moment 80% of people will choose their estate agent based on the price they're given. I'm afraid greed is still good as far as most sellers are concerned. Depending on what the markets like, I mean the market we have at the moment, for instance in London 50% of all the deals are being done at over the asking price. So you want to give a price that's going to get people through the door and it's very difficult to judge from that point of view whether a high price is the right way or whether you want to get the right price.