Why choose an independent estate agent?
Did you know there are 30+ active estate agents in Camberley? That’s a lot of choice when you come to sell your home.
So, the question is: why choose an independent estate agent in Camberley (or anywhere else for that matter) over one whose high street office you’ve walked past for years… or another that has two sale boards up on your road?
That’s the question we’ll attempt to answer – objectively – in this blog. While defaulting to a high street agent may appear the “safe” choice, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best choice for you. Nor does it mean – spoiler alert – that you’ll achieve the best sale price or sell in the shortest timeframe.
Here are four good reasons to at least consider an independent agent when you come to sell your home.
1. Increased selling odds and lower fall-through rates
High street and corporate estate agency is built on a volume model. They take on as many properties as possible – often on long-term contracts – and must keep adding to this pipeline to service significant overheads. This can mean knowingly taking on more homes than they have the capacity to focus on proactively. It also means less time to manage sales once properties go under offer, resulting in higher fall-through rates.
With an independent estate agent, you are 12% more likely to sell your home. And – speaking for ourselves – Wellingtons has had just one fall-through in the last five years. That’s down to the time we personally dedicate to managing every stage of the sales progression process.
2. Sell your home more quickly
Another by-product of high street agents stockpiling properties and tying homeowners into long contracts is reduced motivation to focus proactively on selling your home. It’s a sad but common reality that some agents knowingly overvalue properties to win an instruction, fully expecting to chip away at the asking price later.
This is not how you achieve the best price – and certainly not how you sell within a reasonable timeframe.
Research supports this, showing that homeowners using a personal or independent agent typically sell faster than those using high street agents – on average, 23 days quicker.
3. No one-size-fits-all strategies
High street agents often “paint by numbers” when it comes to strategy. As necessitated by the volume model they operate on, the marketing approach frequently consists of:
Calling through legacy applicants registered on the database up to £X
Each home becomes a cell on a spreadsheet or a number on a whiteboard. High street agents simply don’t have the time – or sometimes the inclination – to tailor their approach to individual properties.
With an independent agent, there is time to devise a bespoke strategy – one that ensures your home is presented at its best and positioned in all the right places online to reach buyers, including social media channels.
4. Higher sale prices
Perhaps most compelling of all, homeowners using an independent estate agent often achieve a higher sale price. This comes back to several of the factors already mentioned: personal focus from an experienced agent throughout, and the right marketing and pricing strategy in place from the outset.
An independent agent is also typically more motivated to negotiate robustly on your behalf. Research shows that homeowners using an independent estate agent sell, on average, for £5,400 more.
Food for thought?
Ultimately, much of this comes down to the benefit of having an experienced agent managing every aspect of your sale – without passing you to a back-office team or junior negotiator.
When you come to sell, you should naturally explore different options: speaking with friends, reading online reviews and checking out estate agent boards in your area. But these won’t always tell you who is the right agent for you.
So, if you take just one thing from this article, let it be this: speak with several different agents – and make sure an independent agent is in that mix.
If you want any advice on your home from this particular independent estate agent, or perhaps to arrange a valuation, please get in touch.