If you were told tomorrow you needed open heart surgery, you would want to ask a few questions to your surgeon.

• What are the risks?
• How experienced are you – how many of these operations have you done and how long have you been doing them for?
• What is the success rate?
• And probably a few more!

What’s that got to do with property?

None of the team here, in all our combined years’ experience, can remember being asked more than a handful of times:

• What are the risks? (There are many when moving home.)
• What is your experience? (How many sales have you managed through to completion and how long have you been doing that for?)
• What is your success rate? (% of asking price achieved, time to find a buyer, sale agreed to exchange success rate)

Why don’t people ask these questions when they are clearly extremely important to achieve a minimal stress, successful sale?

All people seem to focus on is lowest fees and highest valuations, regardless of the consequences and choose an agent based on one, or both, of those figures.

As Perry Power says: “Yet 75% of the population don’t trust estate agents… maybe that’s because 75% of the population choose the wrong estate because they aren’t choosing based on enough research or the right questions and then they’re being left with the guy (or woman) who was a car salesman yesterday, never negotiated anything in his/her life and moonlights as a part time Local Property Expert while doing nails and eye lashes in the evening. (disclaimer: There are LOTS of AMAZING estate agents out there).

Smoothly handling property sales (and negotiating the best outcome for a client) requires skill, practice, expertise, commitment and experience. Not £900 and a login area to get your house on rightmove.co.uk.”

The most important take away is that something may seem cheap but what hidden costs are there? Increased risk, poor experience and poor success rates. You wouldn’t take that option with your health, why do it with your home?