A seller once agreed to a photography date purely because it suited the diary of the agent, not the growing season of the garden. Three weeks before full bloom, the shots were taken anyway, and the listing launched with the garden half finished, with no window left to redo it once the campaign had g

An agent track record looks like objective evidence. A list of sold properties, a set of prices, a number of days on market - these feel like facts. In many cases they are. What they are not is a complete picture. The numbers that appear in an agent profile are the ones the agent chose to show. The

There is a widespread belief that the bigger the agency, the better the result. That belief deserves scrutiny - because the data from local sales does not consistently support it.Brand recognition and agent performance are separate variables. The first is a function of marketing spend. The s

Sellers who approach agent track records as transparent performance data make worse agent selections than sellers who approach them as curated marketing material. The difference is not cynicism - it is the appropriate calibration for a document that is prepared by the person being evaluated.

There is a version of this that plays out regularly. A vendor lists at a number that feels right to them - maybe it reflects what they paid, what they spent on renovations, what a neighbour got three years ago. The first two weeks pass with thin enquiry. Then the feedback starts coming in. Then the