The key things that go in to a property sale can be broken down in to 4 areas:
- Skill (this is simply a case of knowing the right thing to do in the innumerable situations that arise throughout a sale).
- Time (measured in minutes and hours).
- Investment (How much money is spent)
- Attitude (how well are the above 3 areas utilised).
Skill (expertise)
Skill determines the likelihood to make the correct decision in a variety of circumstances. Sometimes people use the word experience. Experience in itself doesn’t improve skill. 20 years doing the wrong thing is just a long time doing the wrong thing. You’ll only really learn how skilled someone is through asking great questions or experiencing their decision making first hand.
Time (hours)
Selling a property in itself requires time to carry out each task. To carry out a pre-market phone out alone you’re looking at circa 8 hours work. That’s 2 hours for a team of 4. Sales chasing to the required standard takes 24-36 hours. There are only so many hours in the day, no matter how you divide it up!
Investment (£)
Everything costs. If it’s better it generally costs more. If you want more of anything it costs more. This would cover things like advertising, brochures, print and miscellaneous items.
Attitude
What price do you put on working with a positive, diligent, pleasant, hard-working & trustworthy person? None of the above matters if you don’t trust the person you’re working with.
Conclusion
You can cut corners in any of the above areas as you wish. Sometimes it’s hard to work out if you’re cutting a corner or not. Estate agents are generally very unlikely to tell you that they themselves need to cut corners.
If someone is incredibly skilled, (they must have invested a lot in terms of learning) invests a lot of time and money and has a great attitude, they’re not going to be cheap……
Every agent is going to say that they do the best in each area. It’s really down to you as a seller to work out the truth. Eg. for £1000 you’re not going to get a professional photographer paid for, 36 hours of sales chasing and a really skilled individual.
People like to do things differently, but I’ve found most of all that people like to feel like they’ve got value for money. Whether that be having spent £1 or £10,000.
The really interesting thing I see across the country is that those that cut the most corners are generally those with lower value homes. But EVERY property is a huge sum of money. Getting 5% less on your sale price on a £100,000 home is still £5,000 in cold hard cash.
Any questions please do ask.
Simon.
