Selling houses means giving the right information. 26/09/11

Heywoods can today reveal one of its biggest secrets to successful house selling, which may well come as a surprise to those with commonly held misconceptions about estate agents.

And the news is that sellers get a far better outcome by marketing their property with clear and accurate sales information as opposed to resorting to sales puffery, which simply alienates prospective buyers.

It said that people were far likelier to buy a property when it actually matched their expectations after reading the sales particulars.

We believe that virtually every house has its redeeming qualities, be it size, decor, location or simply its affordability, and that it is the role of an estate agent to highlight the genuinely good features of any home it has on its books.

By creating a false impression about a property all an estate agent would be doing would be wasting the propective buyer's time as they would get a true picture soon enough when they arrived for their viewing appointment.

Therefore it would be pointless boasting about a secluded garden or gorgeous views of surrounding countryside unless those claims happened to be true.

Our comments come in response to Office of Fair Trading proposals to issue new guidelines to estate agents about giving accurate information to consumers – a move that the company says has been long overdue.