Valuations and client commitment

Estate Agents: Why Are We Still Giving Our Time Away for Free?

Could charging £150 for a professional property appraisal lead to fewer appointments, more instructions and better client relationships?

By Dominic Murphy · 3 November 2026 · 8 min read

I go to the dentist. I pay for the appointment.

I book a table for dinner. Sometimes they want a deposit.

I book a flight for next year. I pay upfront.

All perfectly normal. Nobody questions it.

Yet in estate agency, we routinely commit hours of professional time, knowledge and resources to prospective clients without charging a penny.

Why do we keep giving our professional time away for free?

Is it because that’s how we’ve always done things? Because homeowners expect it? Or because we’re frightened the agent down the road will do it for nothing?

Having spent much of my career building and operating estate agency businesses, I think it’s worth challenging a convention we rarely question.

What does a free valuation actually involve?

Consider a hypothetical agency carrying out 100 market appraisals a month. The appointment isn’t simply the hour in someone’s living room. There’s qualifying the enquiry, researching comparable properties, preparation, travel, the meeting itself, administration, recording recommendations and a couple of proper follow-up conversations.

And yes, I mean conversations. Pick up the phone rather than relying entirely on automated emails. But that’s another article!

Let’s allow four hours in total per appointment.

100 valuations × 4 hours = 400 hours every month.

At a 30% instruction conversion rate, that produces 30 instructions — or 13.3 hours of valuation-related work for every instruction won.

And winning an instruction is only the start. You still have to market, negotiate, agree and progress a sale to completion.

What if we charged £150?

Imagine instead offering a Professional Property Appraisal & Sales Strategy Consultation for £150, payable at booking. The fee would be non-refundable once the service has been properly delivered, subject to applicable consumer cancellation rights. If the homeowner instructs the agency and the sale completes, the £150 is credited against the final selling fee.

Now suppose paid appointments fall from 100 to 70 per month, but the people who book are more committed and instruction conversion rises from 30% to 50%.

These are illustrative assumptions, not measured outcomes. But the arithmetic is interesting.

Thirty fewer appointments, five more instructions and 120 working hours saved every month. Annualised, that’s 1,440 hours and £126,000 in upfront receipts.

Importantly, the receipts are not the same as additional profit. VAT, costs and credits against completed sales must be accounted for. The real opportunity is more effective use of time and potentially better-quality instructions.

It isn’t really about the £150

When something is free, there is very little financial commitment. A homeowner might invite four agents around, hear four different opinions, choose the most optimistic asking price and withdraw a few months later if the property hasn’t sold.

They may have lost very little financially. The agents, meanwhile, have committed time, marketing resources, viewings and sales progression.

Now consider someone who has paid for thoughtful, evidence-based advice. They have deliberately chosen to engage a professional and should expect a proper service in return.

Are they more receptive to a realistic pricing strategy? More willing to listen to market feedback? Less likely to withdraw after a few disappointing weeks?

Perhaps. But we must distinguish selection from persuasion: people willing to pay might already be more serious sellers. That could be useful in itself, but it needs testing.

Have we undervalued our expertise?

We pay solicitors for advice, surveyors for their expertise and accountants for consultations. Estate agents routinely provide research, local market knowledge and pricing strategies concerning assets worth hundreds of thousands — sometimes millions — of pounds, for nothing upfront.

Estate agency is different: it has traditionally been a success-fee business, with the cost of unsuccessful appointments built into completed-sale commissions. That model has worked for many years.

But established doesn’t automatically mean optimal. Why assume homeowners would never pay for a well-defined, genuinely valuable consultation?

Charging creates accountability, too

If somebody pays £150 for professional advice, the agency must deliver something worth paying for.

Not a generic pitch. Not an inflated figure designed to win an instruction. Not a promise unsupported by the evidence.

A proper consultation should explain comparable sales, competing properties, buyer demand, a realistic pricing range, recommended asking-price strategy and marketing options, with a written summary to take away.

Whether or not they instruct, the homeowner should feel they received value.

It must also be clearly described as an estate agency market appraisal, not misrepresented as a formal RICS valuation. Booking terms, VAT treatment and consumer cancellation rights need to be transparent.

But the agent down the road will do it for free!

Perhaps they will. And some homeowners will choose the free appointment.

But homeowners don’t always choose their estate agent solely on price. Reputation, knowledge, marketing, trust and confidence matter. Why assume that a carefully positioned paid consultation has no audience?

There’s an important risk: if the £150 charge reduces appointments to only 40, even a 50% conversion rate delivers 20 instructions rather than 30. A higher conversion percentage on its own is not success.

The measure that matters is profitable completed transactions and good client outcomes relative to the time invested.

Would I test it? Absolutely.

I’d run a controlled trial and track enquiries, booking acceptance, appointments, instructions, withdrawals, price changes, sales agreed, completions, client satisfaction and hours invested.

I’d compare it against the existing model, allowing enough time to observe actual completions rather than declaring victory after a few weeks.

The question isn’t simply whether an agency can collect £150. It’s whether the change produces better professional advice, more committed clients and better outcomes for everyone.

So should estate agency valuations be free?

I’m not convinced they always should be. Nor am I claiming £150 is the right answer for every market, agency or homeowner.

But I am convinced we should be prepared to question the habits we’ve inherited.

Perhaps the question isn’t whether homeowners would pay £150. Perhaps it’s why we’ve spent so long assuming they wouldn’t.

What do you think?

If you own an estate agency, would you test a paid consultation? Would you worry about losing appointments? And if you’re a homeowner, would you pay £150 for evidence-based advice if it were deducted from the selling fee on completion?

I’d genuinely be interested to hear both sides.

Dominic Murphy
The Estate Agency Consultant
Lived it. Loved it. Loathed it. But most importantly, learned from it.

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