Evren Ergin said the lowest fee wasn’t always the way to go either
For most people, selling a home is one of the biggest financial decisions they’ll ever make. Yet according to entrepreneur Evren Ergin, the process is often dominated by guesswork, sales tactics and inflated promises that can ultimately cost homeowners both time and money.
After more than a decade working in residential property, the founder of property platform ValuQ said too many sellers still chose an estate agent simply because they offered the highest valuation or the lowest fee. He believes that approach frequently backfires.
Evren said: “It’s crazy when you think about it. You can compare insurance, mortgages, builders and almost every product you buy, but you can’t properly compare estate agents. Sellers are often making one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives with very little information.”
He said the traditional process could also be hugely time-consuming, with homeowners expected to arrange multiple valuation appointments before they’ve even decided who they want to work with.
He explained: “I could always see the pain that estate agents and homeowners went through. Most sellers have full-time jobs. They can’t take annual leave just to host five or six valuations during the week. It becomes chaos.”
That chaos, he argued, often led to poor decisions.
Evren added: “When someone is busy, the instruction usually goes to the estate agent who offers the highest valuation with the lowest fee. Properties being overvalued to win the instruction is rife within the sector. Months later, the only phone call the homeowner gets is asking them to reduce the price.”
Having worked for both independent agencies and large corporate chains, Evren said he saw first-hand how unrealistic valuations were sometimes used simply to secure instructions.
He continued: “There we were encouraged to overvalue properties by 15% to 20% just to win instructions. One elderly client called after we’d told them their property was worth far less than we’d originally promised.
“They’d already made life decisions based on that valuation. That really didn’t sit right with me.”
Those experiences led him to launch ValuQ, a platform where homeowners submit details about their property once before receiving written valuations and proposals from local estate agents that can be compared side by side. Rather than relying on the highest figure, Evren believes sellers should focus on which valuation is backed by the strongest evidence.
He added: “If somebody values your property at £300,000 and it eventually sells for £300,000, that’s valuable information. If another agent is consistently 10% or 15% out, people deserve to know that.”
He also believes homeowners should remain firmly in control of who contacts them.
He said: “Our biggest principle is that homeowners stay in complete control of their own data. We don’t sell it. We don’t pass it around. You decide who contacts you, not us.”
With ValuQ now expanding beyond its Essex pilot, Evren hopes the platform will help homeowners choose estate agents based on evidence rather than promises, making one of life’s biggest financial decisions a little less stressful.
