Wed 03 Apr 2019

Why you should enlist the services of an estate agent

Why you should enlist the services of an estate agent - BalgoresOur news

A successful sale takes expertise

In the digital era, it almost seems as if anyone can become an expert in anything. However, house selling is one thing best left to the professionals.

This is the information age, and today, we have unprecedented access to information about anything and everything. Car won’t start? Who needs a mechanic when you can order a diagnostic tool and plug in the fault code? Want to dabble on the money markets? Just download a trading app to your phone and you can start trading bonds and forex without the need for a stockbroker.

Chances are you have already spotted the flaw in that plan. Knowing you have a faulty camshaft sensor is not going to get you back on the road and buying and selling on the trading markets without expertise will end in disaster. Exactly the same applies if you are selling property. There are some who try to go it alone without expert help, but as the above examples illustrate, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Here’s why you still need your friendly estate agents in Chelmsford to make a success of a property sale.

Understanding the process

Henry Ford once said that when you hire people who are smarter than you, it proves that you are smarter than them. The trick is to find the right person. After all these years, businesses are fully taking this on board and outsourcing those non-core roles at which someone else is “smarter than them,” for example finance, IT, facilities management and so on.

The same applies in our personal lives. Put simply, an estate agent knows how to sell a house because it is what he or she does day in and day out.

Realising the true value

Sure, you can get a rough idea of what your property is worth by looking at similar ones online, and that is fine as a starting point. But there are two factors to keep in mind that might sound obvious but often become obscured. One is that you want to get as much money as possible for your property. The other is that it is only worth what someone is willing to pay.

An estate agent will be expert at walking this tightrope and will be able to advise you on your property’s true value. Perhaps features such as a conservatory, new windows or remodelled garden will mean that yours is actually valued quite differently to the ones you were looking at online.

Saving you time and stress

Let’s be honest, selling anything privately can be a nightmare, and if you’ve ever tried to rehome your old car you will know that just placing the advert brings all sorts of timewasters out of the woodwork.

With a house sale you can multiply that hassle factor by ten. Luckily, however, an estate agent will weed out the house-buying equivalents of the tyre-kickers and only send genuine prospects to view your home.

Negotiating the perfect deal

Following on from the above, there will come the inevitable offer, counter offer and, ideally, handshake with your buyer. Unless you are an experienced market trader or used car dealer, this is probably not a negotiation that you will relish getting involved in. Don’t panic, estate agents are great at this and will have a good feel for whether a buyer is lowballing and just how much room for negotiation there might be.

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