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Which Estate Agent do you Choose?

February 2020

How do you choose an estate agent? What do you need to look for?

 

Which Estate Agent do you Choose?

Full transcript below:

Alex: Which agent do you go with? It’s often a conundrum for people. There’s of course option A, the chap who’s quoted you the highest guide price, option B, the guy who’s quoted you the lowest fee or is it option C, the guy that’s given you the best sales pitch and the most professional approach. Few of you nodding in the audience and you’ll probably say well Alex, you know what it’s a mixture of all of those in different measures and that’s how we’re going to gauge which estate agent when I come to sell my house we should go with. You’re all in agreement? Great. The answer is of course none of that, it’s option D, it is of course look at the estate agents front of house team. At the end of the day these are the people sat in the office on most days on the telephone, they’re meeting and greeting people off the street. Those are the guys that are actually selling your house at the end of the day. Not the very nice chap, the valuer sat in your kitchen necessarily. Obviously, he will be in the office taking the odd call but more likely than not it will be the guys that are in the office and that is probably one of the most important points in terms of having to cut through a lot of time, sort of sales sea and getting to the heart of the matter. So, market appraisals and this is where you as the homeowner are inviting agents out to come and see you and I always sort of say to clients get three agents, not more because then it starts to get confusing.

Most important thing is please ignore your friends and your family, because at the end of the day of course your mother, your wife, your cousin, your best friend are of course going to say that your house is the bees knees and your underselling it and of course you should put an extra 200,000 on the price. Yes, they’re always going to flatter you but at the end of the day they’re not actually in touch with the market on a daily basis and I treat their advice of course with a touch of caution. And again, be careful, I put Zoopla! And Zoopla with an exclamation mark. Zoopla at the moment are an interesting one to watch, they’ve got a very generalised algorithm and again people hang their hats saying well look Alex I’ve looked at my property at Zoopla has churned out that and it’s got to be worth that. Unfortunately, the way maths and statistics work, it’s just done on averages and it’s just there to give you a ballpark guide it’s not there necessarily to hang your hat on and that is it in pounds, shilling and pence. The other misconception is at the end of the day estate agents are not valuing your property, they’re not there to value your property, they’re there to give you market commentary and market advice. By that I mean they are not there to give you pounds, shillings and pence this is what your property is worth this afternoon, they are salespeople, they are marketing people, they will say Alex we think your house is worth £500,000 but in order to get that for marketing purposes we’re going to out it at a guide of 550 or 525 whatever it is.

So, again just be mindful of that so it goes back to how you chose your agent. You don’t list them out in terms of A, B and C, well this is the price order of guide price, we’ll go with the chap that’s given us the biggest guide. It’s slightly irrelevant in that regard. As I’ve mentioned it’s a people business, everything that I will go and talk through its all about people, it’s all about building rapport with the right people and you are buying with your estate agent, your buying into that individual of course who sat in your kitchen talking all through it, you’re buying into their nice front of house team and all the viewing agents because at the end of the day you strike a good rapport with them, they will look after you and they will on a lot of occasions I have, say bend over backwards to help you.

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