Having done this recently:
- Get multiple agents to come round.
- Do your research because they might not have!!!! At least one of our agents had not prepared and 3 days later sent me a Mouseprice valuation report that valued my house higher than he had said.
- Go for the agent you have the most confidence in with the best terms and conditions (in terms of fee and tie in) who will support the price you think is best well. Theres no point picking an agent who you think seems crap just because they picked the price you think is right. But they have to agree your price is viable or they will just tell buyers they agree its overpriced.
- Ask about the % you will pay them and negotiate.
- Ask about the tie in period. Short tie ins are often the sign of a confident agent. If the agent's confidence turns out to be misplaced, then short tie ins allow you to get out fast.
- Go into the estate agents your are interested in as a potential buyer before you think about selling with them. There are two agents in our town who are so aggressive about trying to sell you a mortgage I would NEVER enter their shop again and would be reluctant to contact them for a viewing (the house would have to be exceptional). They would certainly put off potential buyers. Just thinking about one of them makes me angry.
- View properties with your potential agents to see what they REALLY say. One agreed with me on the phone that a house was indeed overpriced the day it came onto the market. Another likes to use fixtures and fittings as a negotiation point.
- In my opinion, and I'm not sure everyone agrees, your agent should tie in with your lifestyle you are selling. If your agent sells mostly country mansions then your young, hip pad might look out of place and the experience seem a bit jarring.
All the advice on price depends on your local market. Where the market is slow you need a good, low price just to get people in the door. Where its more robust you can consider a more speculative price, but you have to be realistic still in terms of offers/being willing to drop it. In fact, in a robust market its probably best to overprice slightly to allow a good offer. But not so much that it will put viewers off. Its a hard balance. Ours sold in a week, but I notice quite a few properties have tried a higher price for about a month, and then dropped it. Some that had been on for a good few months seem to have sold just after a price drop too. A house is only worth what someone will pay, not what you want (which seems to be where the people on Phil Spencer are going wrong). One thing I would have done if we'd been on the market longer is get a friend to 'view' the house and see what the agents were really saying!
Look on Rightmove, etc. at your competition and look at houses that have sold by ticking the show sold STC option. They won't have sold at their asking price very often, but they if they sold they did so with that price on the front. Don't 100% trust valuations on sites like Zoopla as those are trying to price a house using mathematical formula which might not really grasp all the finer points of your property and its assets (it might put price X on a driveway, but in an area where driveways are very rare, X might be too low, for example - also they are influenced by average sales nearby so if you have an unusual property it will be swayed one way or another by that figure). Do all this BEFORE the agents come round so you can put what they say into context.
Make sure you create accounts on Zoopla and Mouseprice and add in information about your property, especially if the valuation seems low. It might go up. By adding details about the spend on the new bathroom, ours went up a lot. While I don't entirely trust them, buyers might still look at them and the higher the number the better.