5 tools to help you find the best local estate agents

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Finding and choosing an estate agent is a stressful job at the best of times, especially so for those who are needing to move quickly. After all, an estate agent is responsible for selling the most valuable asset that most of us will ever own.

In the ‘good old days’, the easiest way to choose an estate agent was simply to ask for recommendations from friends and family, but in the age of the internet we can do better. Much better.

Here’s a list of five tools you can use to help you find the very best estate agent in your local area.

AllAgents

Having been active since 2006, allAgents.co.uk has managed to accumulate a vast database of estate agents throughout the country, with around 200,000 individual, unbiased reviews of estate agency experiences.

The site offers comprehensive coverage of all firms who operate anywhere across the United Kingdom and the site’s text reviews also incorporate an overall score for each agent based on a five star rating system.

Every review is checked and moderated by staff to ensure its authenticity, which means it can take up to seven days before a review is posted. In addition, the company are keen to encourage estate agency businesses to offer feedback on the review comments. In fact, it’s often the case that an agent will submit a further review giving their version of events – a facility which helps consumers to see both sides of the story. As a result, this resource is widely trusted by everyone within the property sector for its independent and objective approach.

Yopa's Agent Guide

According to Yopa, the Agent Guide has ‘impartial data about estate agents in hundreds of towns and cities, from independent branches to big chains.’ Indeed, the tool collates data such as average asking prices, listing times, price reduction data and a whole lot more. For the property researcher, all this information is available in one place, which simplifies the task of comparing the performance of one estate agent against the others.

Get Agent

The service offered by Get Agent targets property owners who want to find a good agent they can trust to sell their home. Site users can access objective criteria relating to the house-selling process to find out how quickly a particular agent could be expected to sell a listed home, and what selling price was achieved. Using this comparative data, it’s possible to see how one agency has performed against its other competitors.

The site uses historical sales data to create a picture of an agent’s performance. You can also view the number of properties sold to find which agent is making the best job of offering prices at the correct level and targeting the buyers in your local area in the right way to achieve a sale as promptly as possible. This can be a particularly important feature for buyers who are in a hurry to move, and so really do need to find the agent with the best track record of selling within a certain time scale. And when it comes to negotiating a sale, would-be sellers will want to locate the agency who can not only value and market a property efficiently, but also negotiate a sale which achieves the best possible percentage of the original asking price.

Zoopla

Zoopla boast ‘the UK’s most comprehensive directory of estate agents and letting agents’ to support those who are buying, selling, renting or letting. Using their ‘how to choose the right estate agent’ guide is a handy way to locate the best local expertise. You can browse lists of estate and letting agents across 14 different UK regions, and also configure searches within a radius of as little as ¼ mile of your location up to 30 or even 40 miles away. In addition, there is a comprehensive A-Z directory of agencies.

Google Reviews

Using the Google Maps facility, it’s possible to source reviews of agencies within your local area. The reason why Google Reviews is important is that companies value positive reviews which help their business achieve a higher profile within Google’s search results.