I think one of the easiest ways to misunderstand a homeowner is to assume their goal is to sell their house.
Usually, it isn’t.
Selling their home is simply something they need to do in order to get what they actually want.
The owner might want another bedroom because the kids are getting older. They might finally want a garden big enough for the dog. They might be downsizing because they’re fed up with maintaining rooms they never use. They might want to live closer to their parents, get into a particular school catchment or shave an hour off their commute every day.
That’s their true goal. Selling their home is just part of the journey to get there.
I think that distinction matters quite a lot in estate agency because it changes the way you look at the whole relationship.
Naturally, when somebody invites an estate agent into their home, the conversation quickly becomes about the property in front of them. Its value, how it should be marketed, what similar homes have sold for and how quickly it might sell.
All of that matters, obviously.
But while the agent is thinking about the house they’ve just walked into, the homeowner is often thinking about a completely different one.
They’re picturing their extra bedroom. Their bigger kitchen. The smaller garden they no longer have to spend every Sunday cutting. The school their children could attend. The town they’ve wanted to move to for years.
That’s what they’re emotionally invested in.
And I think the closer an estate agent can get to understanding that end goal, the more valuable they become to the homeowner.
It also explains why motivation can change so quickly.
Someone can spend six months saying they’re “thinking about moving” without doing very much about it. Then the right property appears and, almost overnight, they become incredibly motivated.
Nothing about their current home has changed. Their destination has.
Suddenly the valuation matters more. The timescale matters more. The quality of the buyer matters more. Even a difference of a few weeks in the transaction can become incredibly important because everything is now attached to something the homeowner genuinely wants.
That’s also why helping someone with their onward move can make such a difference to which agent they eventually choose.
If three perfectly good agents come round and all give similar advice about the current property, there may not be a huge amount separating them.
But if one of them really understands where the homeowner is trying to get to and starts thinking about the move from that perspective, the conversation feels very different. They’re no longer simply talking about selling a house. They’re talking about helping somebody achieve something.
And that, to me, is a much stronger position to be in.
An offer isn’t simply £10,000 higher or lower if it affects whether the seller can afford the next property. A completion date isn’t simply a date in the diary if it determines whether they can get the children into a new school before September.
Once you understand the goal, the decisions around the property start to have much more meaning.
Perhaps that’s what good estate agency has always really been about.
Yes, we sell houses. We market them, negotiate them and hopefully get them through to completion.
But the house itself is rarely what the client ultimately wants. They want whatever gets unlocked next.
And the agent who understands that is in a much better position to help them get there.
Chris Webb is the founder of The Estate Agent Consultancy.
