Buying, selling, renting: What's the best way to go about it?

Selling a home can be one of the more overwhelming processes you could go through. This goes two-fold for those looking to buy a new home at the same time.

One of the ways to get your property to sell for the best possible price is to maximize your marketing exposure and that includes pushing properties on well-known sites like Rightmove and Zoopla.

But what kind of estate agent should you be turning to? Virtual or actual?

If you’re looking to avoid doing most of the legwork yourself, then having a traditional estate agent is the way to go when taking important factors into consideration such as marketing the property, getting viewing feedback, negotiating the best price and managing the sale through to a successful completion.

When wanting to sell a property, one of the first things the seller will home in on is the commission fee. But all that glitters is not gold, especially in today’s demanding property market.

Online agents may offer cheaper commission fees than estate agents on the high street but there are a number of things to be wary of.

“When looking to buy or sell a home, it can be the biggest decision you’re ever going to make,” noted David Lench, who is Group Managing Director of Wards.

“So will you not want to talk to someone about it? Despite what digital onliners may say, it is very difficult to talk to anyone when going through them.

Cheaper fees are not always the best option

“A lot of people will see the commission fees for online estate agents as being lower - say around £1,000 - and think it is the obvious choice, especially when comparing that figure to a high street estate agent that could charge around £3,000 or more. But there are lot of things that they may not be aware of.

“We do much more marketing through our vast network of offices together with contacting our data bank of potential buyers to encourage them to view. This is not something onliners do.

“Even though traditional agents are more expensive, they use marketing to reach a much larger marketplace in order to create more viewings to achieve the highest price possible.”

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