Here at Suzanne in France we pride ourselves in providing our clients with an excellent service whether you are the purchaser or the vendor. This does not stop when you complete your property sale. We will do everything we can to ensure that the transition to moving to France (if it is a move from a another country) is as smooth as possible. All our clients receive a welcome pack to celebrate their house purchase but, more importantly, we provide an unrivalled after sales care service. Within your welcome pack, a list of essential contacts and service providers are given. Not only that, we are able to provide you with contact details for various trades whom we use regularly. They are only considered for our welcome pack if they have a proven track record, are highly competent, efficient and have excellent reviews.
We understand that there are numerous Real Estate Agents for you to choose from. We welcome competition. For us, it means we continue to strive to be the best that we can be and ensure that standards are constantly maintained and raised to the highest level. This is why we continue to be the most recommended Real Estate Agent in our area – 100km radius from our base in Sourdeval, Manche Department, Normandy.
We have a global, international audience for your property. Gone are the days when the sale of your property was solely reliant on a picture in the shop window (of which we have too!) and on a property website. We understand and have adapted to the fast moving and ever changing pace of Social Media eg. reels, stories and creative content.
We have a prolific presence on all our social media platforms. Our Facebook page alone has 10,000 followers (June 2023) – for an independent Real Estate Agent that covers a radius of just 100km, we don’t mind saying that this quite impressive! Insofar as our reach is greater than many independent agents but also Agents that have regional and nationwide coverage.
So, if you are looking to choose a Real Estate Agent to market your property here in France, we would recommend you take into consideration the following:-
Valuation
Ensure you get at least 3 valuations on your property and carry out your own research as to the anticipated market value in your area.
Please also take into account the energy rating eg. how efficient is your home? Valuations are generally made working out the square meterage of your property but a good, experienced agent, will be able to know fairly quickly how much your property is worth based on recently achieved local sale prices. It may be tempting to take the valuation that is the highest, however, please bear in mind that some agents will purposedly inflate the price so you put the property on the market with them. Months later, when there is little interest, because it has been overvalued you would have been tied into a contract and the momentum may have been lost. You could lose valuable time and a chance to move due to this common oversight.
We value your property based on the French property market. We do not value it because it may be great value compared to a house in the UK, America etc. This is why we can sell your property to people of all nationalities. Any house that is priced right will sell. So please do be aware of the temptation to go along with an agents exaggerated claims.
Reach
When we talk about reach we are talking about how well your agent will promote your property. Do they have a good Social Media Prescence eg. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube etc? It is not all about the followers but they should be able to show you some data as to how wide an audience is reached. A good Real Estate Agent will be proud to show you some facts and figures. Also bear in mind, the type of platforms they consider to be a good source of exposure. Do they advertise with agencies that may be unheard of by Americans for example? Do they advertise with online publications but to access them you have to pay for a subscription? Delve a little deeper and have a google yourself to see how pro-active your agent is.
We are constantly striving to improve the efficiency of finding a buyer for your property – watch this space for a big announcement very soon!
Teamwork
Do you get the feeling the agency works well as a team? Depending on the structure of the business, it can be that individual agents within the company are competing against each for commission based sales. This does not, in our view, make for a good working environment and our ethos is a happy team = happy clients. All our sales are the successes of every single member of our team.
Experience
Everyone has to start somewhere in the industry but how much experience does the agency and its agents have in selling properties? Do they know the area, can they speak adequate French? Are they able to liaise in an efficient manner with notaires and have good relations with local businesses? We have a fully bilingual team – one of our team member speaks no less than 4 languages! We believe this goes a long way to selling your property to French nationals and international clients and not just to an English speaking audience.
Honesty
Unlike all other Agents we believe in giving you the best chance of selling your property. We never coerce Vendors into signing a Sole Agency Mandate by promising their property will be better advertised, feature in paid for advertising or window space or even saying that we will pay for the compulsory Energy Report on the property. We do not believe that tying a Vendor in to a 3 or 6 month exclusive contract is best advice or practice. We promote all our properties equally.
We don’t pay to enter into award ceremonies as this gives the impression that this was somehow awarded independently. This, in our view, is a bit misleading. So we don’t have awards to say we are the best Real Estate Agent – we will let our clients be the judge of that and save ourselves an entrance fee!
Finally, we believe that by being upfront with buyers as to the potential costs involved of any defects/structural repairs is essential in building trust between all parties. We ensure that photos of vendors houses are not edited in a more favourable light eg. we do not insert a blue sky if there isn’t one! We live in Normandie and the weather conditions are on a par with the South East of England.
Viewings
How many viewings or potential clients that are going to view your property will give you a good indication of the above. Because we value your property correctly in the first instance, we regularly get the full asking price (certainly since Covid 2020) and often have multiple offers on the same property.
So these are just a few of the things you may wish to consider when choosing a Real Estate Agent in this area and beyond. We would be delighted to sell your property but accept and welcome competition – we also want everybody to be able to sell their property irrespective of whether or not you choose us to market it for you. We wish you all the very best with your sale.
