Dan Wallin - Personal Estate Agent

06/06/2026

03/06/2026

30/05/2026

''The market just shifted in your favour. Most people haven't noticed yet''

If you're a first time buyer reading this, here's the part nobody is telling you.

Mortgage rates are higher than they were six months ago. Yes. But also.
Average earnings are up 3.9% on last year. Asking prices are down 0.9%. The Loan to Income cap was reviewed in 2025, meaning lenders can now stretch to 5x or even 5.5x salary for first time buyers with a strong profile. There are more 90% LTV deals on the market than at any point on record. Stock is at a ten year high, so you have actual choice for the first time in years. And the typical first time buyer home outside London now costs around £1,038 a month on a 2 year fixed at 80% LTV.

That isn't cheap. Nothing is cheap right now. But the picture is genuinely better than it was, and the gap between renting and buying is narrowing in real terms.

The trick is not to wait for perfect conditions. Perfect conditions never arrive. The trick is to know your number, your area, your mortgage agreement in principle, and to be ready to move when the right home in Elmbridge appears.

Want to talk through what that actually looks like for your situation? My number is in my linktree

28/05/2026

''Coming back after a bad first attempt isn't starting again. It's starting properly''

Most homes that don't sell didn't fail. They were just badly launched.

Hand on heart, if your home was on the market last year and didn't sell, that probably wasn't your fault.
In 2023, only 52.88% of homes that came to market actually sold. A flip of a coin. A new listing has a 59% chance of selling. A property that has switched agents drops to 44%. A multi-agent listing falls to 38%.
So if you've been here before and it didn't work, the question isn't "is now a better time?" The question is what changes this time.

A new agent. A new price. New photography. A new strategy. A reset, not a relaunch of the same campaign that didn't land before.

Worth knowing, too: changing agents after eight weeks, rather than reducing the price further with the original agent, gives a seller a 34% higher chance of selling and 12% more for the property.

If your home in (hyperlocal area) has been on the market before and you're thinking about another go, let's talk before you do anything. Same house, different approach. That's what makes the difference.

26/05/2026

''Cheap fees pay for cheap selling''

If you're choosing an agent on fee alone, you're not choosing an agent. You're choosing a discount.

Let's talk about fees, because nobody else will be honest about it.

The agent quoting you 0.8% isn't cheaper than the one quoting 1.5%. They're charging less because they're selling for less.

Here's the maths. Properties marketed with full professional photography, video, floorplans, drone shots, and the rest get 93% more enquiries, are 39.4% more likely to agree a sale, and achieve 1.63% more for the property. On a £400,000 home in (hyperlocal area), that's an extra £6,520. Comfortably more than the difference in fee.

That's before you factor in the agent's time. Discount agents need volume to make their model work. More listings per agent means less time on yours. Less attention at viewing. Less chasing on the chain. Less of everything that actually moves a sale forward.

A Personal Estate Agent works the opposite way. Fewer listings, more care, more time on every move. Higher fee, higher net result. Every time.

If you want the cheapest agent in (hyperlocal area), there are plenty. If you want the best price for your home, that's a different conversation.

24/05/2026

''If your home isn't moving, the price is the message''

Reducing the price isn't failure. Refusing to is.

Nobody likes a price reduction conversation. But the data on this is brutally clear.

Properties that reduce their asking price are 26% less likely to sell than those that don't, take 3 times as long to sell, and are twice as likely to have a sale fall through. Reduced homes typically end up cutting their price 1.83 times, equating to around 11.35% off, and finally selling for about 84% of what they originally asked.

Now read that again. Because the lesson isn't "price reductions are bad." The lesson is that the original price was wrong, and pretending otherwise just made everything worse.

If your home in (hyperlocal area) has been on the market more than a few weeks without serious interest, the market is telling you something. The longer you ignore it, the more it costs you.

A reduction made early, decisively, and with a meaningful change of around 5% can rescue a sale. A reduction made grudgingly, six months in, after three small drops, almost never does.

The right move isn't to wait and see. It's to have an honest conversation now. The market always tells you when the price isn't right. The good agents listen.

22/05/2026

Getting an offer is easy. Keeping it is the job.

Nearly one in four agreed sales is collapsing before completion.

Here's a number that should change how you choose an estate agent in 2026.

Around 24% of agreed sales in the UK are falling through before completion. And 38% of those collapses happen within the first four weeks of the offer being accepted.

Read that twice.

It means almost half of the sales that fail do so in the very window where the agent's job actually starts. The chasing of solicitors. The qualifying of the chain. The reading between the lines of the survey. The early intervention before something small turns into something fatal.

If your agent's view of "selling your house" ends the moment a buyer says yes, you're in trouble. That's where most homes fall apart.

A Personal Estate Agent treats sale agreed as the start of the work, not the end. Same person. Same number. Same accountability all the way through to completion.

In Elmridge, if you're choosing an agent based purely on the asking price they suggest, you're choosing the wrong way. Choose the one who'll still be answering the phone the day before you exchange.