As you plan to move home and research which estate agency to use, you may notice for-sale boards that pop up in your area. But how do you choose which agent to use when you come to sell your own home?

You might think that the biggest corporate agent with national coverage is the best option—surely all that coverage and branches in every town are a good thing.

You might think that the agent with the most boards up is the best option. After all, if they have most of the homes for sale in your area, lots of other sellers have chosen them, too.

You might ask your friends and family for recommendations on the agent they used when selling their property.

It is vital that you choose your estate agent correctly when marketing your home for sale, as the estate agent can make or break your sale. A good agent will sell your property, but a great agent will sell your property for the highest price and in the timescale that suits you. In contrast, a bad agent can ruin the whole thing for you, leaving you out of pocket or without a sale at all.

How can you make sure that you select a great agent when you sell? Make sure you look out for these key things when making your selection: their experience, competency, strategy, and fees.

• Experience - do they have the experience required to handle the sale of your property? This goes further than just how many years they have been in the industry or how long the company has been in business. Do they have the specific experience to sell your property? If they only ever sell town-centre apartments, will they have the experience to sell an equestrian farm? The kind of properties that an agent is experienced in selling feeds into the database of buyers that they have to market your property to, as well as understanding the property and the key selling features.
• Competency - simply getting the enquiries in from buyers is not the only job of the agent. Their role is far more critical than that. How will they handle the enquiries when they come in? Will they maximise each enquiry to ensure they don't miss any opportunities to promote your property to every potential buyer?
• Strategy—How will the agents generate interest in the property? Are they relying solely on marketing the property through portal websites, or do they have an active, productive and useful database? Many agents can tell you that they have thousands of buyers in their database, but that is essentially useless unless they have a way to speak to those buyers and they are engaged and active.
• Fees - It may not feel like it at the start, but the fees are largely irrelevant if the agent doesn't actually find you a buyer. Fees are one of the main points of comparison between agents at the valuation stage. Hence, it is understandable that it is something that is considered when choosing an agent. If you get to the point of finding a buyer for your property, you will most likely not mind paying them for getting the job done. So, don't base your decision solely on fees. As the saying goes 'good isn't cheap, and cheap isn't good." Select your agent because they are right for the job, not because they will charge you less.

Not all agents are the same, and it is so much more than just sticking some photos online and waiting for the buyer to come along. There is marketing, cross-selling, promotion, appointments, viewings, market reviews, negotiations, updates and constant contact with buyers and sellers alike.

That only gets you to the point of accepting an offer. Then, the legal process starts, and the agents are the linchpins, holding the sale and potentially the sales of connected properties together, pushing the transaction towards completion. Then, and only then, will they charge you a fee.

In reality, by the time you get to this point in the process, you will probably not even remember how much the fee is or the fees of the other competitor agents that you considered at the outset. You will just be delighted that you chose the agent who is your right-hand person in this tricky and lengthy process. This is a considerable process, and money should not be the deciding factor with who you should have in your corner.

If you would like to discuss how we can help you make your home-moving dreams a reality, contact our team today.