You’re selling your home and hiring an estate agent but what is it they actually do?
We have outlined below everything an estate agent will do to help sell your home, from doing a valuation at the beginning to helping you accept an offer.
Valuation
When selling your home you need to know how much your property is worth. Getting the right valuation is important in order to sell. Overpricing can lead to your home not selling and being on the market for a long period of time. Under-pricing can lead to you losing out on money.
A valuation is one of the first steps an agent will take in selling your home. They will inspect the inside and outside of your home and look at the overall condition of your home. They will also look for added features that could add value to your home and will have knowledge of your area such as, what homes in your area have sold for before and what local schools and transport you have in your area. All this information will help them come up with a reliable valuation.
The valuation is a great opportunity for you to get to know the estate agent and what they can offer you. They can tell you how they market properties, more information about your area and what you can do to add value to your home.
It is recommended to get three different estate agents to value your property. You can find agents through research and recommendations and a super easy way to do this is through homemove. All you do is enter your postcode on our website to find a trusted estate agent in your area.
Marketing
Marketing your home is very important in order to sell. An estate agent will be able to cover all the marketing involved and even market your home in places that you wouldn’t be able to do yourself.
Take a look below at the different ways an agent will market your home.
Property Portals
One of the main benefits an agent will be able to offer you is, marketing your home on property portals such as, Rightmove and Zoopla. Rightmove has 127.5 million visits on its site monthly. You cannot market your home on these portals yourself as they only deal with estate agents. Therefore, without an estate agent you could miss out on a lot of potential buyers as a Rightmove subscription is very expensive for an estate agent. The fees you pay go towards accessing this pool of willing buyers.
Social media/ website
Other online marketing an estate agent can offer is, marketing your home on their social media as well as, adding your property to their website to reach as many potential buyers as possible.
Newspapers/ office window
Not all marketing is done online. Some agents will advertise your home in newspapers or in the office windows of the estate agents. This is a good idea as it will reach potential buyers that don’t use property portals or social media.
For sale signs
An estate agent can also provide you with a for sale sign if you want one. Potential buyers may walk or drive past your home and see it is for sale, so it is great to attract buyers who aren’t online and are more likely to be local. You don’t need a for sale sign though if you wish to remain private.
Photography
They should also get professional photographs done of your home. A good estate agent will know the best ways to make your home stand out and show it’s best features. The photos taken should be of high quality to attract more buyers and help the selling of your home. If you are unhappy with the photos, let the agent know and they will redo them.
Floor plans
A floor plan will be created to show the layout of your home and the size of each room in your home. These plans will help a buyer visualise how they would move through the space in your home. A floor plan can be hard to do yourself, so having an estate agent to do this for you is a great benefit.
Description of your home
An estate agent will come up with a description of your home. Using an experienced estate agent for this is a good idea, as they will know what needs to be written to grab potential buyers interest. A potential buyer may only read the first few lines of the description and a judgment is made quite quickly on whether they want to find out more about your home. So, having an engaging and enticing description is important.
All of this marketing mentioned above should be included in the estate agent fee, but have a discussion with the agent to know what marketing you get for the fee you will pay.
Advice/ help you might need
Your agent should be there for you throughout the process. They should address any questions or worries you have, help you prepare you home for viewings, cover all admin jobs and just be there to offer you any advice.
Viewings
An estate agent will arrange and conduct all viewings of your home. The benefits of using an estate agent are:
- They will show the best features of your home to a potential buyer
- Be able to answer any questions about your home or local area
- They will make sure your home is secure during viewings
- Vet the buyers for you
- They may already have potential buyers lined up that have shown interest in homes similar to yours before
- Takes the stress away from you as the agent will do everything
Negotiations
Your agent will deal with the negotiations. They will be the go between for yourself and the buyer. An estate agent will receive offers from a buyer and then relay the offer to the seller. If there are offers that don’t meet the price you want, then the agent will negotiate on your behalf to get the best price for your home,
Negotiations can be tense, you could have to deal with a difficult buyer, which is why having an experienced estate agent will help you. They will be able to keep a happy relationship between yourself and the buyer, meaning the sale is less likely to fall through and you will get what your home is worth.
They will also be able to work out if the buyer is serious and if they can be trusted, what offers are reasonable for your home and what offers are not. As well as, if the buyer has the funds to pay for your home.
Once the estate agent has dealt with negotiations, you are now ready to accept an offer on your home. Your estate agent will relay this good news to the buyer.
Keeping things moving
An agent will ensure the sale of your home keeps moving, you don’t want any delays in the progress. Which is why it is great having an estate agent that can deal with everything for you. You may already have a lot of stress getting everything sorted, so hiring an estate agent will allow them to deal with any phone calls, or paperwork that needs doing to keep the sale moving forward. Which leaves you time to sort your home for moving day.
Summary
You now know what an estate agent does to help you sell your home. They are there throughout the process and will make sure you don’t miss anything important in order to sell your home. If you would like to know more about the steps involved in selling your home, you can take a look at our blog post ‘How to sell your home- A step by step guide’.
