Tenerife estate agents; can you trust them?
Well……yes and no!
One question we get asked over and over again is whether you can trust Tenerife estate agents on the island and if so, which ones.
Before we get into that, just a little background information.
As many of you already know, to become an estate agent on the island requires little effort.
Simply walk off the street and presto, you’re now an estate agent. Yes, it was that easy.
The “profession” does not require any qualifications and there are no proper regulatory bodies monitoring the sector either so you must have your wits about you.
The truth is if you have two feet and a way of contact, you can become an estate agent.
I’ve known some of them operating out of cars due to being unable to afford a basic office and some furniture.
With commissions on sales typically at 5%, the rewards can be huge, but you have to build up trust and work hard to get to that level. In a nutshell, you need to become established in the market.
During the last property crisis, several of them shut down and some even left the island.
Once the dust had settled, they reinvented themselves under new names and some even returned to try again because good ‘ol Blighty wasn’t having any of their malarkey.
How do you find a trustworthy estate agent then?
With the technology we now have at our disposal, doing due diligence is so much easier and once you sort out the wheat from the chaff of which there are lots of chaff, you can fine-tune a handful of established agents that you know are not high risk and have the solid backing of years of operational and transactional experience.
There are a few things that can help you decide who to place your trust in and I’ll do my best to explain them below.
Physical Office Address
To even begin to take an agent seriously, they should have a physical office that you can visit because we all know how temporary some people can be and having a physical address eases some of that doubt when parting with such large amounts of money.
How Many Years In Operation?
The longer the better because their history gives us vital information as to their intentions and provides us with more details about their business.
Landline Numbers
Landlines help legitimise a business even more and looking back at their presence online should validate that the number has stayed the same throughout their existence.
Do They Have An Official Website?
I used the word official in the subheading because as we all know, some people posing as agents will use free platforms online to create a site or even plant themselves on social media thinking that it will somehow legitimise their offers without paying attention to the most basic things needed to prove that a business is legitimate.
A proper website that has the required information about the company, its services, contact details, and any other information will go a long way in showing their legitimacy.
If you want to dive deeper into how to check websites, then please take a look at our article on how to check for scam sites.
Verified Business Listing On Google Or Facebook?
Getting a business verified requires proof of address and registration so this can help with the validation process when looking for a trustworthy Tenerife estate agent.
Do They Have Reviews Online?
There are many places where previous clients can leave reviews about the business. Bear in mind that some can be fake, others from friends and family, and astonishingly, some from the business owners and employees themselves.
Google is getting better at spotting fake reviews while Facebook still has some way to go.
There are also business directories like Yelp or Trustpilot but even they can be hit and miss so you have to look at the whole picture and make an informed decision.
Sometimes patterns in the reviews will appear that show you if it’s legitimate or not so always look for that.
Of course, there is word of mouth which an island like Tenerife heavily relies on but don’t believe everything others tell you unless it’s someone very close to you and one that you can trust.
Real-Time Social Media Help
If you want to boost your effort in finding out more about agents, you could join our community which provides a real-time Q & A platform and is completely impartial and free to use.
Who We Consider As Trusted Estate Agents
After listing the kind of things we look out for, below are the agents we feel deserve your trust. Their history is intact and we’ve only ever heard good things about them.
