How to Choose the Right Agent to Sell Your Property

Brett Sutton — Mortgage Broker & Former Real Estate Agent

A vendor's guide to shortlisting, testing, and holding an agent accountable before you sign

Most people sell a property only a handful of times in their life, which is exactly why the assumption goes unchallenged: that an agent's job is to “sell” the house. It isn't — no agent can make someone buy. Their real job is to promote your property to the widest possible pool of genuine buyers, then negotiate hard once that interest shows up.

That distinction matters, because it changes what's worth checking before you appoint anyone. This guide sets out how the process works in NSW, then gives you a practical way to shortlist, test, and evidence-check an agent – rather than relying on a pitch across a kitchen table.

How Selling Works in NSW

Two things happen early on, and it's worth understanding both before you start interviewing agents:

1.   You appoint an agent by signing an agency agreement. This sets out their commission, the marketing costs, and the length of their engagement.

2.   Your solicitor or conveyancer prepares a Contract of Sale. In NSW, a property can't legally be advertised for sale until this contract is ready – so it's worth lining up your solicitor while you're still interviewing agents, rather than after you've signed.

What an Agent's Job Actually Is

Strip it back, and the role has three core parts:

•    Maximise exposure – get the property in front of the widest realistic pool of genuine buyers.

•    Convert interest – turn enquiries into qualified, finance-ready buyers who actually inspect.

•    Negotiate the outcome – once genuine interest exists, extract the best price and terms the market will bear.

Photography, campaigns, open homes and database calls all exist in service of those three things. The rest of this guide is built around testing an agent against them, not just listening to how well they describe their process.

Step 1: Build a Proper Shortlist

There's no rule limiting you to only interview one or two agents, and no ceiling on how many is too many. Good ways to find candidates worth a conversation:

•    They sell the most in your suburb – check recent sold listings for genuine volume, not just signboards.

•    You've noticed them sell something genuinely comparable recently – similar street, style, or price point.

•    You liked a specific campaign they ran – the photography, copy or video is a preview of what yours might look like.

•    They've been specifically recommended by someone who sold with them recently and can point to why it went well.

Aim to interview at least three. If the same names keep surfacing across these methods, that overlap is itself worth noting.

Step 2: Test-Drive Them Before You Sign

The best way to understand how an agent will treat your future buyers is to become one of theirs first. Attend an open home they're currently running – ideally for something comparable to yours – as a genuine buyer, and watch what actually happens rather than what they'd tell you happens.

The Test-Drive Checklist

□  Who ran it — the agent themselves, or a junior with limited knowledge of the property?

□  How quickly did they respond to your enquiry?

□  Did they ask qualifying questions — budget, timeline, finance position?

□  Did they follow up afterwards for feedback on the property and price?

□  Did they contact you again about other similar properties — proof they're using their database, not just running open homes?

This tells you more about how your own campaign will run than any answer given across a listing table – because it shows their default behaviour under no pressure to impress you.

Step 3: Ask How Enquiries Are Handled

If you're paying for marketing, every enquiry it generates has a real cost attached. A brilliant campaign is wasted if half the enquiries are never followed up – which makes this one of the most overlooked parts of a listing.

□    How do you capture every enquiry – phone, portal, SMS – in one place, rather than relying on memory?

□    How quickly do you commit to responding, and what does that response involve?

□    Do you track enquiry-to-inspection and inspection-to-offer conversion, and can you show me recent numbers?

Step 4: Ask What They Do Beyond the Paid Campaign

Paid marketing – the listing, photography, floor plans, campaign boosts – is only half the exposure equation. The other half is what the agent does personally, on their own time and network, and it's rarely volunteered unless you ask.

□    Beyond the paid campaign, what proactive steps do you take – database calls, contacting buyers who missed out on similar properties, your own network?

□    How will I actually know this has happened, rather than just being told it has?

Step 5: Ask for Evidence, Not Promises

Any agent can describe a good process. Fewer can back it up with numbers. Ask for their recent results in writing – a reasonable request, and how willingly they produce it tells you plenty on its own.

1.     Average days on market for similar properties they've sold recently.

2.     The gap between their original price appraisal and the final sale price – a consistently large gap is one of the clearest signs of an agent who overquotes to win the listing, then negotiates you down over the campaign.

3.     The method of sale used for each – auction, private treaty, expressions of interest – and how often each one worked.

4.     Where their buyers actually came from – portal, database, referral, another agent, social media. A genuine mix suggests an agent working every channel, not relying on the portal to do the job.

Step 6: Understand Their Fees

Most agencies charge two separate costs: a commission, paid as a percentage of the sale price on success, and marketing costs, which cover the campaign itself and are often payable regardless of outcome. Make sure both are spelt out clearly before you sign anything.

Some agents also offer a performance-based structure – a higher commission rate if they sell above an agreed benchmark price. It's worth asking about, because it ties their reward to actually beating their own appraisal, rather than rewarding them simply for quoting a flattering number to win the listing.

□    What exactly is included in the marketing cost, and what happens to it if the property doesn't sell?

□    Do you offer a performance-based commission, and how is the benchmark price set?

Step 7: Understand Price Guidance — Without Guarantees

No agent can guarantee a sale price – the market decides that. What a credible agent can do is ground their price range in evidence: recent comparable sales and current buyer activity, backed by the numbers requested in Step 5.

Watch for the overquote

Be wary of the agent who quotes highest. Overquoting to win a listing — sometimes called ‘buying the listing’ — often backfires: overpriced properties sit longer, attract fewer genuine buyers, and can end up selling for less after repeated price reductions than if priced correctly from day one.

Step 8: Ask What They'd Recommend Investing In

Ask each agent what they'd recommend spending on before going to market, based on current conditions and the buyer most likely to want your property – presentation and styling, minor repairs, decluttering, landscaping, or a pre-sale building and pest report, for example. A good agent tailors this to your specific buyer and market, rather than offering the same generic list to everyone.

□    Given current conditions and the buyer you'd expect for this property, what would you recommend I invest in before listing?

A Final Word

Having spent over a decade selling real estate before moving into mortgage broking, I've seen this process from both sides – running campaigns for vendors, and now helping buyers structure finance so they can act quickly when the right property appears. The agents who consistently get the best results treat exposure, enquiry handling and negotiation as three distinct disciplines, and are happy to be measured on all three, in writing, before you sign anything.

If you'd like a second opinion on an agent's proposal or price guidance, or simply want to talk through your position before you list, I'm happy to help.

Brett Sutton is now a mortgage broker - but formerly he was a successful local real estate agent and he has a unique insight into selling homes. If you have ever asked how to select the right agent, he offers an unbiased opinion and tools to help you choose.