If you plan to sell your home using an estate agent then choosing the right agent is critical. Picking an agent who is unprofessional, or doesn't sell many properties in your area, can leave you with months of stress with no sale at the end of it.
Fortunately there is some help at hand as a number of websites exist that compare agents in your chosen area and, in some cases, the type of property you want to sell.
Here is my pick of estate agent comparison sites:
This is a fairly new site which shows the sales actually made by estate agents who have registered with the site. You can search for results by street name or postcode and then set the radius and property type for your search. The search displays how many properties where sold by each registered agent as well as some details of the actual properties sold and the selling price.
This site uses ratings left by customers regarding their experience with a particular agent. Where this site differs from many is that the algorithm used can rate agents on property type as well as area which is very useful. Estate agents tend to specialise in certain property types and therefore can give a more accurate picture of the best agent for your property.
This site will obtain quotes from a range of estate agents in your area, together with the services they offer, and present them to you for comparison. This takes the legwork out of obtaining quotes and comparing the services offered, it does not, however, provide any customer feedback. You need to be aware that you will be tempted to judge agents purely on cost which is only one of many ways to really judge an estate agent.
This is another site that ranks agents using customer reviews but what is different about this site is that estate agents can leave comments against customer reviews. As we know there are two sides to every story so allowing agents comments give a more balanced view of an estate agent's quality of service. The site also runs league tables showing best agent, best branch and best rated staff which is very useful.
