Behind the scenes

Can you still trust an estate agent?

13 November 2025 · 4 min read

Many people wonder: can you actually trust an estate agent? In this blog I honestly explain how I understand that distrust, but also why most estate agents prove the opposite, day after day.

I understand the distrust

I hear it more often than you might think: I do not trust estate agents. And honestly, I understand. There are plenty of stories: agents who mainly work for themselves, houses that are supposedly already sold while negotiations are still going on, offers that were never passed on. That sows doubt, and that is understandable. A house is not a carton of milk: it is emotion, the future and security. So you want someone by your side whom you can truly trust.

The estate agent as a person, not a job title

That distrust also affects me, because I know how hard my colleagues and I work every day to prove the opposite. Not with fine words, but by being honest, by listening and by telling people not what they want to hear, but what they need to know. An estate agent is often right in the middle of someone's life at a moment of change: a new chapter, a new love, but also a divorce or a death.

A quick win or staying honest?

Trust does not come from big promises, but from honest advice, even if that means losing an assignment. Or from daring to say honestly during a viewing that another home or neighbourhood would suit a viewer better, even if you earn nothing from it yourself. Those are the moments when you show who you are. In a market driven by figures, trust is driven by intuition and experience.

A moment that stays with me

I once helped an elderly lady sell her home. She had lived there for more than forty years, but after her husband passed away she could no longer keep up with the house. During our first conversations she could not hold back the tears, and honestly, neither could I entirely. When the transfer was complete, she said: thank you for pulling me through this, I did not think I could do it. Those are the moments I do this work for: not for the signatures or the figures, but for the people.

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