The Hook Point Service is unique and we have not found a company offering the same service anywhere on the Internet. In fact, we don’t think there is anything like this in the world, and certainly not in the way we offer the service to Estate Agents here in South Africa. So you may well be wondering what the point of this site is, and for good reason as you have more than likely never come across anything like this before.
Our service is mainly targeted at the public looking for an Agent to sell their home. The challenge is that when engaging with an Estate Agent, or in fact any service provider, it is very difficult to check their references before committing.
This makes us focus on the other factors like the valuation of our property, or their estimation of how long it will take to sell. These are what we see as the ‘Hooks’ or the expectations that are created by the Agent when seeking a mandate. Unfortunately, if they are not accurate this can lead to much unhappiness as you end up waiting forever to get your price or even have to lower your expectations as time goes on.
It is at this time that we wonder if we should have rather gone with one of the other Agents, and if blind trust or the odd referral that we were given for our Agent was not the best criteria in choosing them. Sometimes in chatting to friends about our predicament, we discover that we are not the first seller to have been over promised and would love to know how many other people had been let down. If only we had done some checking first, like getting a list of all the current owners the Agent is dealing with and making a few calls! Our reference checking system does exactly this. We check with every one of our endorsed Agent’s clients, ensuring they are not let down.
So, the point is simply this. Make sure the Agent you mandate to sell your property is willing to have their track record published on the Internet.