The Sales process
As a small independent company run by the owners, we are able to tailor our service to your individual requirements. Just contact us and we will arrange to visit you to provide a market appraisal at your convenience, without any charge or commitment.
To give an accurate opinion on value it will be helpful for us to know some basic information about your property in advance. For example, it’s size, age, whether there is outside space and parking and what work you may have carried out. If an apartment, the term of the lease, service charge information and whether you own a share of the freehold. If requested, we can suggest improvements that may enhance saleability and offer our thoughts on the current property market and the best timing to maximize the price achieved.
We are also happy to offer advice in relation to any prospective purchase you have in mind and support you in coinciding the two if this is your preference. The more you are happy to share your plans with us the better we can help. We are very discreet and respect your confidentiality.
Once instructed to proceed we will arrange for our professional photographer to contact you to arrange a convenient time to take a selection of photographs, create a floorplan and also prepare the EPC (Energy performance certificate) if required. We do not charge for the photographs or floorplans, however it is a legal requirement for all properties to have an up to date EPC before marketing to sell or let can commence. For your convenience, we can arrange for this to be done during the same visit and our charge for providing an EPC is £80 (+vat). Alternatively, you are welcome to source your own EPC (providing it is up to date and fully compliant).
We will produce attractive sales particulars which comply with the Consumer protection regulations (they must be factually correct) and we will never market your property until you have confirmed you are completely happy with them. Once approved we promote your property on all three leading portals: Rightmove, Zoopla and Prime location and contact our keen database of registered buyers. We can advise you a to whether an open house launch could prove effective and promote, coordinate, and attend this personally if it this is the chosen strategy. We will arrange and confirm all viewings at a time to suit you and accompany these as part of the service. We will always provide feedback and contact you regularly to discuss progress. When an offer is made we will gather all supporting information regarding the prospective purchasers ability to proceed including financial verification and then contact you to present this. We will never pressurize you to accept an offer below your expectations and will always negotiate hard on your behalf. Once a sale is agreed we will confirm this to all parties and can recommend excellent solicitors. Our experience shows us that finding a buyer should be the easy part which is why our service does not stop there. We will proactively monitor and assist the progress of the sale, reporting to you regularly until the very end of the transaction.
Fees
As you can see, there is no such thing as a ‘standard service’ and we are always flexible in our approach. This also applies to our fees. On a sole agency basis, our standard fees are very competitive at 0.75% of the sale price or 1.5% in competition with other agents (please note that vat is chargeable on estate agents’ fees). However, we regularly tailor our fee structure at our client’s request. We are happy to operate on sliding scales linked to achieving agreed price expectations or to offer a fixed fee rather than a percentage, if this is a preference. Unlike the online only agents who charge for purely listing your property, we operate on a ‘no sale- no fee basis’. This is because we think owners prefer their agent to be fully incentivised to actually sell their property. We are also happy to delay payment until the completion of your sale. Ultimately, we want our clients to feel that the service they received was not only exceptional but also represented great value for money. This way we are far more likely to be recommended.
"Griffin Stevens are a really good and honest estate agency. We can't recommend them more highly! Moving house is a stressful process, however "stressful" does not even begin to express how upsetting the process was, that we went through, with a well known high street agency in Hampton before Griffin Stevens took over looking after the sale of our property. After 16 weeks of getting nowhere and being given very poor advice, .. that mainly being to reduce and reduce and reduce our price, ...(£200K between their high valuation and the price they tried to push us into taking offers) .... we spoke to Andrew Griffin from Griffin Stevens. Andrew spent a long time listening to and understanding our exasperation. He spoke very clearly and honestly about local property value and backed it up with evidence. He gave us very clear advice about what our house should sell for and what it should be marketed at, and he gave us very clear ideas about how to present our house to create maximum impact, and in particular how to show the double bedrooms off to their best. We met Andrew's team, all of whom have at least 10 years experience each as estate agents. Within 2 weeks of being on the market with Griffin Stevens we had 4 offers, all higher than the best offer we'd had with the other agent. We exchanged on Friday... and with Griffin Stevens fee being just 0.75% (as opposed to 1.8%) we are much better off and much happier than we would have been with the other one! Griffin Stevens are honest, and at the end of the day why would you place your most valuable asset in the hands of anyone other than experienced, honest people who actually do have your best interest at heart... as opposed to other agents who's only real interest is to achieve their own target driven needs, ... without a care that their needs have a massive £cost impact on you. A massive thank you to Griffin Stevens from the Vincents of Hampton!"