5 Questions For Your Estate Agent

“Should we sell our home?”

What may sound like a simple ponderance is actually the first domino in a series of important flow diagram questions that will, hopefully, lead you to a satisfying sale and the purchase of your perfect new home.

If you’re thinking about selling your home, you’re also probably wondering which estate agent you should go with to market the property.

There are the several questions you’ll be looking to ask your prospective estate agent, including the usual suspects (What is my home worth? What are your fees?) and the more searching questions (Will my home sell quickly? Is now a good time to sell?), but how about the questions that really separate the wheat from the chaff?

In this month’s blog, we’re gifting you with the deep and probing questions – the how questions, which will help you determine whether your agent is prepared to go the distance to help sell your home.

Here are our 5 key questions for your estate agent.

1. Do you stage my home before photography?

It’s a truth well known that styled homes often command a higher sale price than non-staged homes.

Not only do staged photographs offer the best first impression of your home for online viewers, but they give prospective purchasers that all important glimpse of what sort of life they can enjoy in the home.

Don’t be offended if your agent wants to stage your home before a photo shoot. It is not a reflection on your style, taste or tidiness! A good estate agent will understand the importance of presenting your home, not for how you live in it, but for how your target market will use it.

For example, often, downsizing home owners may only ‘live’ in a few rooms of their home, leaving others empty or as storage rooms. Your estate agent should be able to transform these spaces prior to a photoshoot, through carefully chosen furniture or arrangement, to highlight their best features.

2. Apart from Rightmove, how else do you advertise and target the right sort ofpeople for my home?

In a world filled with Smart Phones, Rightmove’s reign as undisputed King of the Selling Platforms is coming to an end.

Your estate agent should hopefully have a database of home seekers ready to showcase your home to. In addition to parading your home on Rightmove and other property selling portals, they should be utilising modern social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook and TikTok to reach the right buyers.

For exclusive homes, and the more discerning seller, you could also approach your agent about their approach to ‘secret listings’ and how they market these homes.

3. Do you produce a presenter-led lifestyle video to promote my home?

A good agent will be utilising engaging cinematography in order to invite viewers into your home, before a physical viewing.

A well-directed and professionally produced walk-through video of a home can evoke an emotional response from potential buyers, allowing them to picture the lifestyle they could enjoy if they owned your home.

Does your estate agent offer this service? Do they take the time to present the video themselves, leading viewers through the home and garden, highlighting its key features? If not, you have to ask...why not?

4. Do you offer accompanied viewings 7 days a week including the evenings in the lighter months?

The answer to this question is multifaceted. ‘Accompanied’ is the watch word. Some estate agents may offer a morning service on a Saturday, but will your agent be willing to go the extra mile and be ready to show a prospective buyer around on any given day of the week? Even a Sunday?

Between work, children, the children’s many after school commitments and walking the dog, many potential buyers have hectic schedules, making viewing homes in standard business hours difficult to say the least.

Evening and weekend viewings offer flexibility, helping to attract a larger pool of potential buyers. A higher number of interested viewers equals a quicker, potentially more competitively priced sale.

During the lighter, summer months, the increased natural daylight can work wonders for homes, showcasing a property in–quite literally–its best light. Why tell your viewer that the rear terrace is the perfect place to catch the sunset with a cold drink, when you can show them?

5. Do you produce a high-quality brochure to showcase my home?

How many times have you gone to view a home and been handed a flimsy black and white print out (double sided perhaps)? Or, if you’re lucky, a colour four-page paper sandwich (the centre pages will inevitably get lost or blow away on your walk back to the car)?

Which restaurant would you prefer to dine at? The one with the professionally printed menu, beautifully presented in a carefully bound cover, or the dog eared, sauce smeared (possibly laminated) flimsy single page menu weighted down by the cutlery holder?

The first impression is the same in both cases.

Present your potential buyer with a professionally printed and bound lifestyle brochure; something they can hold, something that won’t get lost or blow away. A robust and romantic vision of your home that when opened up and pored over will engage with more senses than sight alone; filled with evocative description and phenomenal photography.

The answers your agent gives you to these five questions are actually the answer to the one, big, unspoken question: can you sell my home?

If you’re not satisfied with the answers you’re getting, or if you’d like any more advice on what questions to ask when it comes to selling your home, then please give us a call on 0161 697 3422 or drop us an email at hello@burtonjames.co.uk. We’d love to help get you moving.