With a bit of time and effort spent searching the web you can learn to do almost anything you set your mind to, but should you?
We live in a DIY world. If you have access to the internet, you have at your fingertips the sum of all human knowledge and research available to you. There are whole communities of people ready to offer the benefit of their experience. All you have to do is read, watch, or listen to, all the info out there. This situation has opened the flood gates for a raft of online estate agents offering a bare minimum service where sellers can save money by doing as much as possible by themselves.
Gillian Wright, Legal Director of Law firm Gillespie MacAndrew is a leading property lawyer and she is quick to point out that traditional estate agents add a great deal of value where their online competitors do not.
The vast majority of people in the property market have little or no experience of buying or selling a house. The market is full of first-time buyers, or people who have been in the same house for 20 or so years.
Choosing the cheapest option is understandable with some products, but with a house, it’s a gamble. If like me, you’ve never placed a bet in your life, it seems a bit strange to start with the most expensive purchase you are likely to make in your life.
The reason to appoint a proper estate agent is that they can help you navigate all the details, the legal issues, the negotiations, the valuations, and host the viewings – that last point is more important than you might think. Just imagine trying to be impartial while you show potential buyers around your family home!
The fact is that selling a property is often triggered by difficult family circumstances and appointing a professional means you can stand back and let someone else sort it for you.
An experienced estate agent is exactly that, experienced. They won’t be pressured into making a bad decision and they will be able to look dispassionately at your house and advise you based on their knowledge of the housing market in your local area.
At PettyReal we pride ourselves on having unparalleled local knowledge, after all, we’ve been working in East Lancashire for over 90 years. We are also part of the Relocation Agent Network which means we can make your property visible with other agents in the network. That’s something that online estate agents just can’t do, much less a private individual.