There’s a growing idea in the property industry that the hard work has already been done before a buyer even crosses the threshold. List the home online, upload some bright photography, sprinkle it across social media, and let the algorithms quietly work their magic. According to this mindset, buyers are rational, data-driven creatures who simply need access to the right information before making a decision.
It all sounds wonderfully efficient – and is almost entirely untrue.
You Can’t Underestimate Traditional Values
Somewhere in the last decade, the industry has quietly slipped into believing that homes sell themselves. That the estate agent’s role is largely administrative. That negotiation is little more than confirming an email. And that the human touch – once the bedrock of our profession – is now an optional extra rather than a crucial part of the process.
The result has been a steady erosion of the very skills that actually deliver strong outcomes: strategic pricing, thoughtful presentation, intelligent buyer management, and real-time persuasion. In other words, the craft.
At Corum, we’ve always taken a slightly unique stance: that traditional estate agency isn’t old-fashioned at all. It’s simply effective.
And this is the part the industry often forgets: buyers are human.
And this is the part the industry often forgets: buyers are human.
The Viewing: The Most Undervalued Moment in a Sale?
Which brings us to accompanied viewings; possibly the most underrated component of the entire selling journey. Many agents present viewings as a courtesy, something to arrange if they have time around other tasks. We see them as non-negotiable. In fact, as you read this – coffee in hand – it’s entirely likely that one of the Partners who leads our offices is currently standing in someone’s hallway, greeting a buyer, shaping a conversation, and guiding the momentum of a sale.
We don’t delegate viewings downward and we don’t outsource them – because we believe wholeheartedly that this is where real selling happens.
Bruce Patterson, Managing Director of our Ayrshire offices, captures it perfectly: “Most sales benefit from the skills of an experienced local agent if they are to achieve the best price available. An agent provides independence; buyers will always be more open about their intentions, concerns and plans when the seller isn’t standing beside them. That honesty is crucial.”
He’s right – these candid conversations, small as they seem, shape decisions, overcome objections, and ultimately accelerate offers.
And this is the part the industry often forgets: buyers are human. They arrive with their own anxieties, assumptions, preconceptions, and half-formed questions. They rarely articulate these in front of the owner; but they absolutely will with a skilled agent who knows how to create the right environment.
An agent with genuine local knowledge can contextualise concerns in a heartbeat: why that school catchment matters, why the parking works better than it looks on paper, why the sale down the street achieved what it did. These aren’t facts pulled from Google; they’re insights born of daily experience in a market we actually inhabit.
Listing a home is easy. Selling a home is an art.
Listing a home is easy. Selling a home is an art.
Negotiation Begins Before the Offer
This all feeds directly into negotiation, another area where the craft has quietly declined. Negotiation doesn’t start when an offer is submitted; it starts the moment a buyer walks in the door. Tone, confidence, reassurance, the pace of the conversation; these shape whether a buyer ends up offering boldly or cautiously, or whether they offer at all.
A skilled agent builds value long before numbers are discussed.
A skilled agent protects value when numbers are discussed.
And a skilled agent – unapologetically – earns their fee many times over.
Which is why the idea that “cheap fees equal good value” remains one of the great misunderstandings of our time. A low-fee agent can save you a few hundred pounds on commission; a strong agent can add tens of thousands to your final sale price. One reduces cost. The other increases outcome. They are not remotely the same thing.
It turns out that the so-called traditional elements of estate agency – guided viewings, informed conversations, strategic pricing, real negotiation – are the very things that consistently deliver the best results. And in a market overflowing with data but starved of interpretation, they matter more than ever.
Why the Fundamentals Still Win
Listing a home is easy.
Selling a home is an art.
And art, as ever, requires an artist.
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