Hopefully, your choice of an estate agent will prove fruitful. You’ll secure a quick sale and enjoy an excellent customer service experience. But if your property sale has not gone to plan or you are not happy with your current estate agent, switching to a new agent can give your property sale a new lease of life, resulting in an increase of interested buyers and a more positive mindset for you.
You need to remember that it is likely you will be locked into the estate agent’s contract for an initial minimum period. Due to this, you may be required to give notice to end your contract once the initial period ends, this is often 28 days. The details of your notice period and initial minimum period should be set out in the terms and conditions that you signed with your agent at the start of your instruction.
Cancelling your estate agency contract may appear daunting and you could come up against some resistance from your current estate agent. You are likely to be met with a flurry of last-minute activity and new promises to try to keep your business.
If this occurs, it is important to remember the benefits of changing estate agents:
- When you move to a new estate agent, you’ll appear fresh to the market and at the top of the most recent search results on property portals like Rightmove.
- You’ll re-appear on property alerts, set up by anybody registered on property portals such as Rightmove.
- A new property description, new professional photographs and a fresh modern approach to marketing can revive your marketing, encouraging people who’ve previously dismissed your property to take another look.
- Your house may have failed to sell because you were unwittingly caught in the estate agent trap of overpricing and broken promises that they would quickly secure a sale for you. By re-listing, you can reassess the price and list the property at the accurate market value, in order to stimulate the correct level of interest.
Remember if you switch agents while you are still within the minimum period of your agency term, you may be liable to pay two estate agency fees. You must make sure that your minimum term has ended.
