We recently completed sale of our house in LS8 through Preston Baker. Gemma (estate agent) is excellent and worked very diligently throughout a long sale. She was communicative, effective and very friendly; she always had time to discuss anything and everything about sales strategy, viewings, etc. You couldn't ask for a better agent. The problem is this; Preston Baker were the most expensive agency by far. They operated a 3-tier fee option: A) pay all up front, B) pay some deposit now and the rest on completion or C) pay all on completion. A is cheapest and still over £1000 more than the next agency on the parade. And when you are paying so much more nothing short of outstanding feels like good value. So yeah, Preston Baker were great but that was the minimum expectation handing over so much money in advance. They say their value is reflected in their "property launch" strategy which, on average, sells homes faster and gains better final prices for their clients. Statistically speaking maybe it's true, I just don't know. Our house took a while to sell and the final price was below initial asking but most likely this was just the state of the market at that very particular time. Ultimately, I can only judge their performance on my individual experience and the truth is that I didn't see tangible results from their "property launch" strategy. What I did see however, was a drawback was being locked into Preston Baker's pay-upfront fee. After lowering the asking price to be bumped to the top of Rightmove's listings for a week we still hadn't secured a sale. At this point I had agencies ringing me daily offering to take on my house and listing with a new agent would have bumped it up the Rightmove listings again for free. But we couldn't do this without losing all of our fee, as we were tied into Preston Baker's pay upfront price plan. We just had to sit tight and hope. Eventually we secured some lovely buyers and all was well. Preston Baker are professional and effective; once again, our agent Gemma was excellent! But are they value for money? I'm not convinced we got more for our £££s then we would have with one of the other estate agents on the parade. I definitely think you have to put too much faith in them to choose the upfront payment option and for me the other plans are just unaffordable compared to competitors. You might get great results from "property launch", I have no reason to believe it's not effective but at the end of the day the individual market conditions and your property circumstances are far more influential in how your sale is going to go.