Six letters, each printed in full with the service it refers to and the date and time it was written. They arrive at the office from people whose sale, letting or search has finished, and they are published with the writer’s agreement and without editing. There is no average, no star summary and no recommendation percentage, because six letters cannot honestly produce one.
01
Ellen Marsh, Deering Center
I had a number in my head from a neighbour and it turned out to be wrong. The walk round took about an hour and I was shown, room by room, where my figure came apart: the bathroom opens off the kitchen, the driveway is shared, and the two houses I had been comparing mine to both have off-street parking. What came back was a range with the actual sales written under it. It was not what I wanted to hear and it cost me nothing.
02
Tom Ferreira, South Portland
I work offshore and could not be there for a single viewing. Somebody opened the house at nine, put the heating on, and ran six parties through in a day without my having to think about it once. The notes that evening were the things people actually said, including the two who found the back bedroom small, which I would far rather know than not know. Nothing was dressed up for my benefit.
03
Grace Whitlock, Munjoy Hill
The photographs were taken on a clear morning in the week they said they would be, and the order the pictures ran in made sense of a house that is awkward to explain. The description did not call the study a third bedroom, because it is not one. Viewings were grouped into two afternoons instead of scattered across three weeks, and with a toddler in the house that one decision made the whole thing bearable.
04
David Oyelaran, Falmouth
I paid the retainer expecting a list of houses and mostly received a list of reasons not to bother. Eleven places were looked at before I saw any of them and I was driven to four. The one I bought was the third. Being told that a property I had found myself was priced for the view and not for the roof saved me a survey fee, and probably a good deal more than that.
05
Nina Castellano, Cape Elizabeth
The boiler failed on a Friday in January while I was four hours away. A plumber was there the same day, I was told what it would cost before the work went ahead, and the invoice matched what I had been told. The tenants were kept informed without my being in the middle of it. That is the entire reason I pay a percentage of the rent, and this was the first time it has felt like it.
06
Peter Hallowell, Stroudwater
The flat was advertised the day after the inventory was taken and let within three weeks to a tenant whose references had genuinely been checked, which I had not experienced with the last agency. The paperwork was explained to me line by line, the deposit went where it was supposed to go, and nobody chased me for anything I had already sent. It was, in the best sense of the word, uneventful.
It carries no charge and takes 45 to 60 minutes at the property, and it ends either with a written range and a scope worth agreeing or with a plain statement that none of the six services fits.
It is published in the open, where anyone can copy it, so it is left short of its final polish and audit pass. The design chosen is fully audited and polished before it goes live.