The Lister, the Seller, and the Truth About Estate Agent Incentives

The Listing Bonus Dilemma

There are many problems with the property industry – but one issue that stands out to me is the issue of listing bonuses. Yes, it is just as it sounds – some estate agents aren’t actually paid to sell your home. They’re paid to list it.

In certain large, usually corporate or corporate-style firms, the person that attends to consult on your property prior to marketing, gets a financial bonus simply for getting you signed up. They may or may not be rewarded for the eventual sale, or the price achieved – but in either case, their job is to get your home on the books, and usually to hit a target for ‘number of listings’ in any given month.

It’s often described as a numbers game. It’s that old analogy: throw enough at the wall, and some of it will stick. In the case of listings, some will sell — and as long as the targets are hit and the pipeline looks full, the machine keeps running, it doesn’t matter if it takes four listings to achieve three sales, or ten listings.

In purely economic terms, for the estate agency as an operating business, it might make commercial sense for that company – but of course it can spell unwanted consequences for hopeful property sellers. You can well imagine it: you sign up with an individual you like (maybe to never hear from again), full of hope from all the promises made, but weeks later you’re left with a property sitting on the market at an inflated asking price, gathering dust while your plans and aspirations – be that new home, school catchment, or simply a much wanted change of lifestyle – are put on hold.

The Illusion of the “High Valuation”

Another issue many unsuccessful sellers report on after failing to sell with an agent is that they felt their home was overvalued, but ‘could only trust the professional’. 

This is slightly delicate to talk about, because unfortunately – ultimately – that isn’t always an honest assessment of what occurred.

I get it – a high valuation feels wonderful. It’s flattering. It feeds that lovely human hope (an understandable one) that your home is the best on the street… and maybe it is! But a price that’s too high isn’t just optimistic, even when that sort of thing is discussed in strategic terms. It can actually damage your chances of sale and reduce its potential sale price in the long term.

Some agents use inflated valuations to win instructions – and again, this might be due to the allure of a ‘listing bonus’, who knows? Hard to be sure, right? 

It could just be simple disingenuousness. That agent may just have a sense that if they tell you what you want to hear, you’re more likely to sign with them – perhaps caveated with language about ‘trialling it’, ‘optimistic end of the scale’, and ‘we can always reduce if it doesn’t work’. And of course, that is all the truth, potentially; the market has a way of correcting optimism. But the end result is often a painful price reduction weeks down the line, the problem being if the property has by then already gone stale in buyers’ eyes.

At that stage, sellers often feel – even when remembering those conversations about ‘giving it a go’, or ‘we can always bring it down if it doesn’t attract a response’, etc. – that they wish the agent had given their realistic assessment of price in the first place.

At Bartlett & Partners, we don’t play that game. Our valuations are grounded in evidence, experience, and market behaviour, and backed up by analysis of data and realistic comparables. Above all, it is about one simple thing: honesty. We’d rather start in the right place and achieve the right price quickly, than start in the clouds and end up with disappointment. It is why our own selling rate is better than 9 out of 10, not 3 out of 10 as reported as being the results seen at large London agencies.

Fee Wars and False Economies

Another common trap is the “low fee” lure, where the agent promises to do it all for less of a percentage.

But here’s the question: less percentage of what price?

You are selling your most valuable possession, so the question I always want to posit is: why would you want to underpay for that job to be done? It should be about brilliant results, and that means brilliance from the agent, from their photography and descriptions, to – in our case at least – the videography, to intelligent social media marketing as well as the wider main channel marketing campaigns, and of course it requires great communication and care to complement that creativity.

If an agent is offering bargain-basement fees, surely it means that something’s got to give? But which bit can you afford to sacrifice on? 

At Bartlett & Partners, every part of the process matters, but I suppose our attention to the presentation – that visual marketing – is really the cornerstone of what we do. We invest in the best photography, produce exceptional video tours and put genuine thought into the written descriptions – so much so that our ‘socials-first’ launch strategy often generates not just attention but actual offers before your property ever appears on Rightmove or Zoopla.

That early buzz isn’t accidental; it’s engineered. But it comes through having put in all the hard yards over the years to build that experience, to know what works. 

A Smaller Client List – but a Greater Commitment

We only work with around fifteen clients at a time – and that is entirely deliberate.

It means we’re not juggling dozens of listings and hoping something sells. Every property gets our full attention, and every client knows they have direct access to me and my team throughout the process.

There are no listing bonuses – of course there aren’t! We are proud to operate a boutique-style of estate agency here in Twickenham & Teddington, and that means no corporate-style targets either – and certainly no “listers” who disappear the moment you’ve signed the contract.

It’s a refined and personal approach, but more important to me is that it’s a results-driven one. If you are coming on the market with us, that is an instruction to us to sell your home and get you moved, not just to create an advert and hope for the best. 

When your name is above the door, as mine is, you simply don’t hide behind a logo. You’re accountable for every word, every photo, and every promise made.

How to Choose Your Agent (Properly)

If you’re thinking of selling, how do you make sure you don’t fall into the listings trap?

Some quick advice is to start by asking the agents you are speaking to some important questions.

• Who will actually handle my sale? Is it the person valuing, or someone else?
• Are they paid to list, or paid to sell?
• What’s their ratio of listings to sales? Don’t take a vague answer — ask for proof.
• How long are their contracts?
• And most importantly, how do they market homes before they hit the portals?

You’ll quickly see which agents are driven by volume and which are driven by results.

The Bottom Line

There’s a huge difference between listing a property and selling one – but a mistake that members of the public make is to think that agents don’t benefit from the listing alone. They ask why an agent would list if they thought they couldn’t sell a property; the answer is, agents benefit from the advertising profile, regardless of the result – and large agents will, regardless, have enough sales going through anyway to outweigh anything spent on properties that don’t sell.

At Bartlett & Partners, though, I can assure you that we focus on the sale. We say ‘boutique’, but look up the dictionary definition of that, it really amounts to being ‘small’ as well as ‘select’ – and being smaller, that means that our success depends entirely on the success of our clients selling.

We don’t chase targets, which means we don’t need to inflate valuations. And most importantly of all, we certainly don’t rely on luck.

Instead, we combine outstanding presentation, intelligent pricing, and personal service to deliver what sellers actually want: a brilliant result, in the shortest possible time, with the least possible stress.

We’d rather have fifteen listings and fifteen success stories than fifty listings and a reputation for broken promises.

So, when you’re next choosing an agent, don’t be dazzled by the headline number or the low fee. Ask the pertinent questions and don’t be apologetic for that. Look behind the curtain – it’s the right thing to do.