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Why use an approved agent.

What the logo in the window actually stands for, what an agency had to prove before it could display one, and what happens when a member falls short.

The shopfront of an independent member agency on a British high street
A member agency, from the pavement. Everything this page is about is behind that glass, and none of it is visible from here. Location Location

You cannot tell from the outside.

You are choosing an estate agent on one meeting, in your own kitchen, from somebody whose job includes being persuasive. From where you are sitting a careful agent and a confident one look exactly the same. That is not a failure of judgement on your part. It is the situation.

An approved agent is one where somebody else has already done that work. Not by asking the agency to describe itself, but by going and looking: at what its own clients wrote in public, at what it has actually done in its own town, and at what it was prepared to sign knowing it could be taken away.

It is worth being clear about what that does not mean. The Ethical Agent Network is not a regulator, it is not an ombudsman, and it has no legal power over anybody. It cannot promise you a perfect move, and no honest organisation could. What it has is a written standard, a membership, and the ability to take that membership away. That is a good deal smaller than a regulator, and it is enough that the agent sitting opposite you has something to lose that they would rather not.

What it costs to get it wrong.

The decision looks small. It is one appointment, and every agency in the country is pleasant in it. What follows is months long and expensive to reverse.

A price set too high does not cost you the difference. It costs you the first fortnight, which is when the largest audience your property will ever have is looking at it, and that audience does not come back when the price comes down. A contract signed without reading the tie in costs you the ability to change your mind. A sale agreed and then left alone for eight weeks costs you the whole chain when it collapses in week nine.

None of that requires anybody to behave badly. It is simply what happens when nobody is holding a standard, and it is why the useful question is never whether an agent seems nice. It is what somebody else has already checked.

A row of small independent shopfronts on a sunny British high street
From the pavement they look the same. That is the whole problem, and it is not a failure of judgement on your part.

What an agency had to prove.

All of it, or none of it. There is no partial membership, no fast route, and no amount of paying that gets an agency past any of these.

  1. A public record, read properly

    At least 50 Google reviews averaging 4.3 stars or higher. Counting them is the easy part. Somebody sat and read them, the unflattering ones included, and looked at how the agency answered criticism. Those reviews are not the network's and cannot be edited, added to or taken down by anybody here. They sit on Google under the agency's own name, which means you can go and read the same thing we did.

  2. Something put back into the town

    At least one community project, or one community donation, in the last twelve months. Evidenced, not described. Evidence, not a paragraph describing how much they care. It is the only part of the standard that has nothing to do with selling houses, and it is still a condition of getting in and of staying in. An agency with faultless reviews and nothing behind it in its own town is not approved.

  3. An assessment by people who do the job

    Every application is put in front of people who run agencies themselves, in the same market, under the same pressures. They know which answers are real. It goes both ways, and it is the stage most likely to end an application.

  4. The eight promises, signed in full

    All eight or none. There is no version of membership where an agency signs seven of them, and no good year that buys a pass on the eighth. They are published in full further down this page and they have never been reworded.

  5. Money spent on the team, not just the shopfront

    Ongoing investment in training and development for the people who will actually answer your phone, do your viewings and negotiate your offer. The person standing in your kitchen is the product. Everything else is a logo.

A wall covered edge to edge with handwritten thank you cards from clients
One member agency's wall. Nobody is asked to send these, which is exactly why they are worth looking at.

The eight promises every member signs.

These are the words. They are not a summary of the words, and they have never been reworded. Take them with you and see whether the agency sitting in your kitchen behaves like somebody who signed them.

  1. We promise to always act in our clients' best interests.
  2. We promise to always tell the truth. Simple.
  3. We promise to do the right thing even if it costs us time, money, or both.
  4. We promise to never criticise our rival agents, as it undermines our profession.
  5. We promise to respect the members' area exclusivity rule.
  6. We promise to share ideas, tips, issues and advice with fellow members.
  7. We promise to support the local community whenever and wherever we possibly can.
  8. We promise to respect and invest in our team's learning and development.

Four of those eight cost a member something. That is deliberate. A promise that only ever asks an agency to keep doing what it already wanted to do is a slogan.

The Ethical Agent Network member badge sewn onto the sleeve of a member agency hoodie
Nest in Essex

What it is actually worth to you.

It removes a layer of guessing from the biggest financial decision most people make. That is narrower than it sounds and it is real: you are no longer relying on your read of one meeting, because somebody has already gone and looked at the record.

And the agent sitting opposite you has something to lose that they would rather not. That is the part that works on the difficult day, which is the only day any of this matters.

Two Ethical Agent Network member stickers on an agency door

And if one of them lets you down.

Then they lose their membership, and the logo comes out of the window. Membership is conditional, not permanent, and that is the entire difference between a badge an agency can buy and a badge that can be taken away.

Separately from any of that, you already have a route that has nothing to do with this network. Every estate agent in the United Kingdom has to belong to a government approved redress scheme, which will look at a complaint free of charge once you have complained to the agent first and given them a fair chance to put it right. An agent has to display which scheme it belongs to, so you can check that before you instruct anybody. That route is open to you whether or not your agent has ever heard of the Ethical Agent Network.

What happens if a promise is broken Tell us if a member has fallen short

Use this on any agent, member or not.

None of what follows is only useful against a member agency. It was written to be used on anybody, including agents this network has never met, because a checklist that only ever points back at us is an advert.

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