Jane chose Brett Sparks to sell her home. Read her RateMyAgent review here.

Tell us about the property you were selling.

I was in my 60s, with a family home, an investment property and two adult children who hadn’t flown the nest. I wanted to simplify things and set myself up for a comfortable retirement.

Eight years ago, I bought a family home in Melbourne’s outer north. Shortly afterwards, I bought an investment property nearby. The plan was to sell the family home eventually, move into the investment property and have some money to retire with.

[Things ultimately turned out a bit differently.] After moving with my children into the ex-investment property and finding that three was somewhat of a crowd (!) I decided to turn a long-held dream of moving to the coast into a reality. My kids stayed in the Melbourne property, and I’m renting a place in Warrnambool to see how things go.

It’s worked out perfectly so far. The kids still have somewhere to live, and I have somewhere to stay when I come back to Melbourne every now and then.

How did you feel about the process of selling?

I was selling in my suburb for the first time, so I didn’t know the names of local agents, let alone who was the most successful. I could have had a string of agents in there promising that they would get a really high price for my property, but I’d looked at other sales in the area and I knew I had to be more realistic.

How did RateMyAgent help you?

RateMyAgent gave me a good picture of who had sold the most properties in the area. It saved me so much time and work! Without the objective information from RateMyAgent, I could have got 10 agents in to do appraisals, and I still would have had no idea who was the best one to go with.

RateMyAgent’s combination of sales records and vendor reviews helped me work out which agents I felt I could trust to provide an honest opinion of my home’s market value.

After using RateMyAgent to narrow down my shortlist of agents, I only interviewed two. I looked at what other vendors had said about them, and decided to go with Brett Sparks of Millership & Co. I knew the reviews were genuine and written by everyday people. This gave me confidence that I was choosing the right agent.

Brett was absolutely fantastic; I couldn't have gotten a better agent.

Would you recommend RateMyAgent, and why?

Definitely. RateMyAgent saved me time and effort during a transitional time in my life. The website is easy to use, and the idea behind it is great. I'II be telling everybody about it!