In part one of this series, I told the story of selling my house. It took 8 months. The person who kept the deal alive wasn’t my solicitor. It was my estate agent in Balham, south London.

This part is for estate agents. Because you’re the ones doing the most work to hold transactions together, with the least tools to do it.

You don’t get paid until completion

Your commission depends on the deal completing. But once the buyer and seller instruct solicitors, you lose control of the timeline.

The legal process takes over and you’re on the outside, trying to piece together what’s happening from whoever picks up the phone.

You didn’t sign up to be a project manager. But that’s what you’ve become.

Chasing with no visibility

A typical transaction from your side looks something like this. Client calls asking for an update. You don’t have one. You call the seller’s solicitor. They say they’re waiting on the buyer’s solicitor. You call the buyer’s solicitor. They say they’re waiting on the seller’s solicitor.

You’ve just spent 30 minutes and learned nothing. Multiply that by every active transaction on your books.

The information you need exists. It’s sitting in the solicitor’s case management system. But there’s no way for you to see it. You can’t see what searches have been ordered, which enquiries are outstanding, or whether the mortgage offer has come through. So you make phone calls and hope for the best.

The referral leverage you’re not using

Here’s something most agents don’t think about enough: you control the referral.

When a buyer or seller needs a conveyancer, they often ask you for a recommendation. That’s a warm lead the solicitor didn’t have to win through marketing. It’s valuable.

But most agents refer based on habit or personal relationships, with no real visibility into how those firms actually handle active transactions. When you have visibility into the process, you can see which firms move quickly and which let things stall. That’s a powerful position to be in.

This is what DealSync does

DealSync gives estate agents a seat at the table. Both sides of a property transaction work in one platform. Solicitors collaborate in the same workspace, and estate agents get their own dashboard showing the current stage of every active transaction, what milestones have been hit, and what’s still outstanding, without needing access to the legal documents themselves.

When a client calls asking for an update, you have one. When a transaction stalls, you can see exactly where and why. No more chasing solicitors. No more relaying second-hand information. No more working blind.

Just visibility into a process you’ve always been part of but never been able to see. Your clients can log in too, so when they want to check on progress, they can see it for themselves instead of calling you. And it’s completely free for estate agents and their clients.

Mark Marley is the founder of DealSync, a deal workflow platform for UK law firms and estate agents. If you want to see how it works, book a 15 minute demo.