Who’d Be An Estate Agent?
Polly Greenway, DOMVS Director, explains what being an estate agent really means.
What I love about this job is that it’s not easy. Property doesn’t just sell itself. Buyers don’t just appear from nowhere, love a house and agree to buy it – just like that. Sales don’t just speed effortlessly to a satisfactory conclusion and without assistance. Let me tell you it doesn’t work like that – well not for most of the time anyway.
We don’t see ourselves as just selling house; rather we move people. Moving anything is often complicated, can be fraught with difficulty and have unforeseen consequences. Just think about moving twin six-year-olds single-handedly from home to school every morning, or moving a central heating boiler, or moving 250,000 tons of crude oil half way round the world or moving a herd of sheep from one hillside to another. It all takes planning, patience, knowhow, experience and resolve. It means expecting the unexpected, problem solving and, when other people are involved, the highest level od tact and diplomacy.
I don’t know about you, but if I wanted to move a herd of sheep, I would hire a shepherd. And in a way, that’s what we are. We arrange for something with lots of moving parts – each with a mind of its own – to end up where it should be on the date it is supposed to be there. Estate agents shepherd people, contracts, surveys, mortgages, removals, withdrawals, gazundering, false starts, disappointments, the unforeseen and triumphs from one place to another. Sometimes it’s a smooth process. But all too often it isn’t. That’s why it’s worth employing a shepherd who knows what they’re doing right from the start. Because, believe me, when it has been sheeting down with rain all day, the quad bike has broken down, a fox has snatched a lamb and a large group of unreasonable ewes have made a long break for freedom you will think a shepherd is worth every penny.
We do it because we enjoy being shepherds. Moving people and families on th the next stage of their lives and making it as seamless and stress-free as possible is a job we enjoy and think is well worth doing. We look forward to helping you too.
