Why should you use an estate agent to sell your home?

When looking to sell your home, it pays to employ professionals to act on your behalf to make sure your home sells as fast as possible for the highest price. With their experience, contacts and commitment to the sale, an estate agency will help to ensure that your sale proceeds with the minimum of delays by resolving any issues in the chain. They will take care of all aspects of selling your home and closing the sale, leaving you to focus on your other commitments.
Selling privately on the other hand can be a time consuming and costly process. If you choose to sell your home privately, you will have to:

Decide upon the right selling price of your home

This means taking time out to properly research your local market. You will need to know which properties your home is competing against and what they have to offer. Pitch the price too high and you’ll scare off buyers. But pitch it too low and you’ll be selling yourself short.
When you hire an estate agency your property will be marketed to many more buyers than if you sell it via your own devices. With more people viewing your home, it is more likely to achieve a higher price, which can in itself exceed the estate agencies fees. 

Organise your own HIP or Home Information Pack

It is very important that all the relevant information be available for scrutiny. If any of this information is wrong or missing it could seriously harm your sale.

Here at Jonathan Waters we offer great savings on the cost of your HIP. At present we are even providing these for free - click here for more information, and note that terms and conditions apply.

Market your property

This will more than likely involve drawing up your own set of particulars, taking care not to fall foul of the Property Misdescriptions Act 1991, taking pictures, drawing up a floor plan, erecting a “For Sale” sign and taking out an advert in the local press.

Whilst these may be enough to close a sale, a large percentage of buyers now search for properties on the web. Property portal sites such as Rightmove are where a lot of buyers search, as well as browsing estate agencies own web sites. If your property is not listed in these frequently visited places then there is a danger a buyer will not find your property – even if it is exactly what they are looking for.

A good estate agent will market your property across a full range of channels, to ensure your home is highly visible to your target buyers.

Arrange the viewings

This means ensuring that someone is available to show people around, even if they don’t turn up. It means knowing what to say and when to say it and importantly, it means knowing when to say nothing at all.

An estate agent is experienced at selling houses. When they show buyers round, they know how to emphasise the best bits and wash over any areas that are not perfect. They are also detached from your property – and sometimes a buyer feels more comfortable being shown by someone other than the homeowner.

Deal with and negotiate any offers

You will need to tread the fine line between being too bullish and losing the buyer’s interest and giving too much away and not achieving the right sale price.

Again experience helps here and an estate agent does this all day every day. Clever negotiations could make the difference of £5000 or more. So it pays to get this right.

Progress the sale

This will involve getting to know the sales process and keeping in close telephone contact with the buyers and solicitors up and down chain.

An estate agency will keep on top of communication so that you don’t have to. They will do their best to keep the chain moving without delays and deal with any issues that arise.

Tips on choosing the right estate agent

Choosing the right estate agent is very important and when doing so, there are a number of key questions to be considered;

1. Do they come with references?
2. Has anyone you know used them recently?
3. What was the service like?
4. Do they have a good reputation?

There is no better form of advertising than word of mouth. If an estate agent comes to you with good references from people whose opinion you trust, then that is as good a recommendation as you can expect.

1. What forms of advertising do they use?
2. How will they market your property?
3. Are their staff motivated to sell?
4. Do they open 7 days a week?

This is a measure of the agent’s proactivity. Do they sit back and wait for the business to come to them or do they actively go out to look for it?

1. How successful are they in your local area?
2. Do they have many “For Sale” and “Sold” boards in your area?
3. What sort of properties do they regularly sell?

These questions are aimed at the agents target market. There is little point in trying to sell a town centre flat through agents who mainly sell country houses, land or new homes.

1. Are you tied into a contract?
2. How much notice do you need to give prior to any contract termination?
3. What are their agency fees?

These questions centre on the commitment you are expected to make to the agent. Check the small print thoroughly to ensure you know exactly what has been agreed.

Here at Jonathan Waters Estate Agents in Ipswich we are committed to selling your property. Our enthusiastic and friendly team work 7 days a week to sell your house, flat or bungalow as quickly as possible and take the worry out of moving. From the moment you instruct us, we will offer you complete support every step of the way – until you are holding the keys to your new home!

Click here to arrange a free valuation of your property.

• We have a superb range of properties to choose from in all price brackets and are very happy to give advise with mortgages/valuations and offers -

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