The best agent for you is the agent that you are able to trust to guide you through the process.

A few indicators of a good agent are:

Industry qualifications and professional memberships

These can include being members of or holding qualifications from:

• NAEA Propertymark naea.co.uk
• Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) rics.org
• The Guild of Professional Estate Agents guildproperty.co.uk

All members are required to work to agreed codes of practice and the relevant logo will be displayed in their offices. You can check on the trade body websites to ensure an agent is a member if you have any doubts.

As part of being a professional and holding membership, there are a number of key areas an agent needs to ensure are in place:

• Professionalism and Training– Agents will need to maintain professional standards by ensuring that their staff have a minimum level of on-going training to keep up to date with their skills.
• Redress Schemes– All member agents will be part of a redress scheme. If you have a complaint about their services and you are unable to resolve it with the company directly, you can refer your complaint to the redress scheme and they will adjudicate in order to resolve the dispute.
• Reputation– Agents have to uphold their reputation to maintain their business and therefore need to take a professional approach to their work.
• Knowing their client– As part of taking on a new seller and buyer, an agent will need to take some basic information and identity documentation so that they know who they are dealing with.
• Compliant – Being registered with HMRC to ensure they comply with all the obligations under the money laundering regulations

A strong local presence

Knowing the local market is key to getting the best price for your property and if your agent has an identifiable local presence this will help reach the maximum number of buyers. Sold boards locally will demonstrate what they have sold, along with a comprehensive website and portal listings.

Positive first impressions

A professional agent will know how to make a positive impact on buyers and sellers alike. If your agent creates a poor impression with you – the chances are they will do the same with any potential buyer. The same applies to their websites and online presence, if it doesn’t work well for you it probably won’t work well for your buyer.

The relationship with your agent is important and if you don’t believe that they will do a good job for you or are trustworthy, then they are not the right agent for you.

Recommendations

As with most professional services, a recommendation from neighbours or friends is a great endorsement of an agent’s services. Increasingly there are now review style websites that will give you both positive and negative feedback on an agent.

TIP: When you invite an agent to value your property, make sure you have noted down questions you’d like to ask them. Our friends over at Rightmove have been kind enough to prepare a questions checklist to help ensure you’re asking all the right questions. You can view it here: ‘Questions to ask estate agents’

Why choose Peepal?

We are a member of NAEA, ARLA and we work closely in line with the Property Ombudsman and the Approved Code Trading Standards. What this means is that the level of service you’ll be getting from us will be delivered at the highest level.

Our professional agents that pack a wealth of local knowledge will be able to provide you with in-depth and local information that’ll be key to turning that ‘For Sale’ sign to ‘Sold’. When buyers are interested in a house, they don’t just look at the house; they look around the neighbourhood, schools & shops nearby, as well as potential area growth; therefore, having an in-depth understanding on those areas is crucial!

As we mentioned above, positive first impressions count, and we’d like to make that positive first impression with you and your property’s potential buyer!

Call us on 01252 947555 today to get impressed 😉

Your property, our priority!

Peepal Estate Agents