The Role of an Estate Agent

The estate agent is the link between a seller and a buyer, who will negotiate an agreement of sale acceptable to both parties. An Offer to Purchase is drafted by the estate agent, which must be signed by the buyer, seller and estate agent.

Selling your Property

Selling a property can be an emotional rollercoaster, but a good agent can be critical to reducing the stress levels when selling your property. Did you know that 99% of property sales are complete with sellers using estate agents, after all, your estate agent is the expert in the selling of a property – not the owner.

Why Instruct an Agent?

Your key reasons for instructing an agent should be because of their negotiation skills, their ability to market your property to the widest possible audience and their experience of managing the sale process.

An estate agent who has excellent marketing, selling and negotiation skills – because of their expertise, estate agents will have developed these skills over time and on each successful sale will build on them. They are polished in their skills of negotiating and re-negotiating

Experience

An estate agent is likely to have sold hundreds of homes but find out if they have sold on your street before or sold a properties like yours before. What price did they achieve and what is the market like for your particular type of property.

An experienced estate agent is backed by a wealth of information about the housing market, both their own recent sales prices, competitors, valuations from their chartered surveyor contacts, the statistics offered to estate agents on Rightmove. Estate agents live and breathe houses every day which makes them well-equipped to know the do’s and don’ts like the back of their hand. Many estate agents – like conveyancing solicitors - continuously improve their skills via estate agency seminars and briefing sessions.

Quality Sale

Estate agents are expert in preparation of their sale and DIY approach could put off a lot of serious buyers or make others think ‘where else in the house has the homeowner cut cost’. Estate agents invest heavily in maximising the potential reach of their audience to give them, and you, the best possible chance of finding the right buyer for your property at the best possible sale price. Rightmove being one tool which is not open to the public for private sales, as well of course as their own offices, billboards, postal adverts, newspaper adverts etc.

Local Knowledge

An obvious advantage over national online estate agents too, is the fact that local estate agents will have good local knowledge both about general house prices and the ability to make comparisons with geographical areas so as to work to your property’s advantage.

Online Estate Agents

An online estate agent does not have offices on every high street, instead, they conduct most of their activities online. And, that means they don’t have to restrict themselves to a small geographical area and instead, spread out on a national scale. All of this leads to some significant benefits of online estate agents that we are about to reveal to you now.

Save Money

One of the biggest advantages of using an online agent is the cost. Most high street agents charge a commission fee, whereas many online agents charge this fee upfront – the downside being that if your house doesn’t sell you won’t get your money back.

A Huge Amount of Choice

Online agents offer a huge variety of packages so with a little market research you should be able to find one that’s right for you. Lots of online estate agents will offer additional extras, like Energy Performance Certificates (which you legally have to have before you sell your home) and premium listings.

You’re in Charge

When you use an online estate agent you’ll probably conduct viewings yourself which means you will be in charge of showing people around and answering any questions they may have. Most have a personal area of their website from which you can accept requests for viewings and set the times that would be best for you.