"He put three photos online and takes €12,000": the criticism is common, and it lands when the agent is poor. The trade is hard to read from outside, because most of it is invisible. Here is what it actually contains, item by item.
Before the listing goes live — where everything is decided
Pricing. This is the heaviest decision of the whole sale, and it is taken once. A property listed 10 % above its value does not receive lower offers: it receives no offers at all. Buyers in its bracket compare it with better properties and discard it; buyers in the bracket below never see it. The property settles into a dead zone, and every week there pushes it deeper — buyers who see it reappear assume a defect.
The file. EPC, electrical inspection, planning information, post-intervention file, and depending on the region, oil tank or soil certificates. These documents determine the validity of the preliminary contract. Assembling them takes weeks, and a single missing item can delay a signature.
Photographs and presentation. A listing's click-through rate determines the number of viewings, hence the number of offers. It is the most profitable lever in the whole chain, and also the one most often botched. A professional photographer costs a few hundred euros and changes the order of magnitude of the traffic.
Selecting from the buyer database. An agency active in a neighbourhood has candidates already searching. Calling them before the listing goes live sometimes sells within a week, before any advertising.
During marketing
Screening. This is the most thankless and the most useful part. Of ten viewing requests, some come from the curious, from neighbours, from people whose financing will never clear. An agent who checks borrowing capacity before the viewing saves you dozens of hours and, above all, avoids the expensive scenario: a contract signed with a buyer who fails to obtain credit, a property blocked for three months, and a relisting carrying the stigma of the property "that came back".
Viewings. A useful viewing lasts forty-five minutes and prepares the next one: the agent listens to objections, notes them, and adjusts the presentation. Count two hours with travel and the write-up.
Feedback. After five or six viewings without an offer, objections repeat and say something precise: the price, a fixable defect, a misleading photograph. A good agent reports those objections to you, even when they are unpleasant to hear.
Managing the quiet spells. Periods without viewings are normal. That is where those who analyse separate from those who wait.
Negotiation — the service that weighs most
This is the hardest item to judge from outside, and the one your result depends on most.
A buyer offering €335,000 on a property listed at €350,000 may go to €345,000, or may not. The difference lies in the agent's ability to know how far they can push, to raise the offer without losing the buyer, to handle several candidates in parallel without antagonising them, and not to fold at the first "that's my final offer".
On a €350,000 property, a €10,000 difference in the negotiation is more than the entire commission. That is why choosing an agent on their rate is almost always a bad calculation.
It is also why the way an agent defends their own fee tells you something: it is the only free sample of their negotiation you will get.
Between the preliminary contract and the deed
The sale is not over when the preliminary contract is signed. Four months remain, and a significant share of sales fail in that interval — credit refused, a condition precedent unmet, a pre-emption right, an administrative snag.
During that period the agent follows the financing, sends documents to both notaries, chases, and handles incidents. This work is invisible when all goes well. It becomes decisive when something jams — and then the experience of someone who has seen the case before saves weeks.
What does not justify the commission
Let us be precise, because the criticism is sometimes well founded:
- The shop window. It has not produced buyers for fifteen years. It reassures the seller.
- Simply listing. Publishing on the portals takes an hour. If that is the bulk of the service, the commission is not justified.
- Brand recognition. Buyers search by property and by neighbourhood, not by agency name.
- The mandate taken and left to sleep. An agent who takes a six-month exclusive mandate then does nothing for two months has sold you inaction.
How to tell, before signing, which category they fall into
The work described here can only be observed afterwards. Two proxies work beforehand: past results on comparable properties — how many sold, in what time, at what gap to the asking price — and the written marketing plan, which commits to what will be done rather than to what will be obtained.
An agent who provides both without evasion is almost always on the right side.