In this blog: 

• Does a local estate agent get me more money than a national or online one? 
• What is a buyer list and why does it matter to me? 
• How can I tell whether an agent really knows my village? 
• Who is likely to buy my home?

Somewhere within a few miles of your front door, a couple have been looking for eight months.

They’ve seen eleven houses and none of them were right. They know exactly what they want now, down to which side of the lane they want to be on.

It hasn’t come up yet. It might be yours.

That isn’t a sales line. It’s how moving works around here. In any given week, there are more people wanting to live in these villages than there are homes for them to buy, and most of those people are waiting rather than shopping.

So the question worth asking isn’t whether your buyer exists. It’s whether the agent you choose is the one they’ve been talking to.

The people we already know

At Homes, we talk to buyers long before they find the house they want.

When somebody registers with us or comes to a viewing, we find out where they’re moving from, what they have to sell, how quickly they could move and what they’d compromise on. Then we keep talking to them. We know who has just sold and is ready to go, who is chain free, who has been outbid twice and is losing patience, and who says they want four bedrooms but would take three with a decent garden.

That’s a few hundred people at any one time, and none of it can be bought in. It comes from years of the same people standing in the same hallways having the same conversations.

We’ve been doing this since 2011 and we’re now in our fifteenth year. Our offices cover Alton and its villages, Liphook and Petersfield. All our offices work from the same list.

Which means if you’re selling in Liphook in September, there’s a fair chance we’ve been talking to your buyer since June, when they first walked into our Alton office.

Why that buyer pays more

Somebody who finds your home on Rightmove on a Tuesday night is at the very start of something. They like a photograph. They haven’t decided they want to live in your village, or that they can afford it, or that they’re really moving at all.

The couple who have been looking for eight months are somewhere else entirely. They have already decided they want to live here. They have already worked out the school run and where they’d put the dog. They aren’t deciding whether they want to live there. They’re waiting for the right house.

When your home comes up and it’s the one, they don’t need persuading. They need to make sure they don’t lose it.

That’s where good prices come from. Not from clever negotiating, and not from a bigger advert. From the right person seeing your home at the moment they’re ready, and knowing exactly what it’s worth to them.

What this means when you come to sell

It means the most useful question you can ask an agent isn’t about their fee, or even their valuation.

It’s this: who have you got, right now, looking for a home like mine?

A good agent will answer that properly. They’ll describe actual people. Where they’re moving from, what they have to sell, how long they’ve been looking, and why they think your home might be the one. They’ll do it without checking, because they had the conversations themselves.

If the answer is vague, that’s worth knowing. Most of the time you won’t need to press anybody on it. You’ll be able to hear it.

Ask us who is already looking

You don’t need to book a valuation to ask. Ring whichever office is nearest you and ask who we have looking for a home like yours. We’ll tell you, and we’ll be specific about it.

If we haven’t got the right person today, we’ll say so honestly and tell you who we think will want it and why. That’s useful either way, and it costs you nothing.

And if you’re months away from doing anything, that’s absolutely fine. A good number of the people we’re helping to move this autumn first spoke to us last year with no plans and no timescale at all. There’s no pressure from us and there never will be. If you need us, we’re here.

Ask us who’s already looking for a home like yours. Talk to Homes in Alton, Petersfield, Liphook or Grayshott.