THE PROMISING CHANGES OF PROPERTY AGENTS

As we say goodbye to 2018, what have I found most heartening on the consumer front? The most heartening and personal experience this year was my involvement with the real estate industry over the sale of my property. As readers will know, I’ve been pretty critical of certain elements of the industry in the past. I was nothing but impressed, however, by the professionalism and effort of my agent and her company. In particular, she left us in no doubt that she was working for us, the vendors, not the buyers. This is how it should be, but not how I always felt to be the case. Changes to real estate law have certainly worked in favour of consumers, even if they’ve added the burden of paperwork on agents. In an earlier column, I was suspicious of real estate firms offering free appraisals on properties. But the three we got were fair and carried out very professionally. Their estimates were conservative rather than unrealistically high. So my bouquet for 2018 goes to real estate agents who work hard and strategise intelligently on behalf of their vendor clients.