The Agents

Mark Greig

Managing director,

Paramount Investments

When people come to sell their pub, they appoint a property agent and wait for offers to come in.

And they wait, and they wait. And instead of offers, in come the excuses. And all the while, in today's market, the pub for sale is losing value.

That's because they have thrown all their eggs into one basket, trusting one agent with the sale.

Under no pressure to compete, an agency can - and will - take its time, leaving your property to sink to the bottom of their list of priorities.

Under such circumstances, pubs can take months to sell. And during those months, your costs will mount up in fees, advertising, and the cost of maintaining a pub you want to sell.

In addition to this, you will be impatient to get on with your life, but instead will suffer the stress of being prevented from not being able to reinvest your money, while your pub languishes in your agent's in-tray.

For all these reasons it is often worth appointing more than one agent, right from the start. Don't be indiscriminate, or you might end up paying all kinds of unnecessary upfront fees.

To keep costs reasonable, try picking three agents.

This way, each agent will be driven by the incentive of competition to be the first to sell your pub - and collect the commission.

At Paramount Investments, we are entirely driven by the competitive passion that a multi-agency approach generates.

We have already sold more than 60 pubs this year, nearly all on individual contracts, we don't hang about - we can usually guarantee exchange within 48 hours of an offer

being accepted.

So if you don't want to hang around for months while your property loses value, it's well worth considering a multi-agency approach, in our humble opinion.