Choosing an agent is usually decided by a number. Three firms visit, three figures are suggested, and the highest one tends to win.
It is worth naming why that is a poor mechanism. The suggested price is an element of the pitch that costs the agent nothing to raise and that you cannot check while they are standing in your hallway. An agency that wants the instruction can win it with an optimistic figure and hold the reduction conversation six weeks later, by which point the buyers already active in that band have seen the property and passed over it.
So the useful questions are not about the number. They are about what sits underneath it, and what happens after you sign.
Questions about the price
What is this figure built on, and can I see it? The answer should be completed sales of comparable property, the stock currently competing with yours, and a realistic read on time. Watch for asking prices being presented as evidence. Anybody can point at what the neighbours are advertising; nobody has to pay it.
Is this an appraisal or a valuation? Those are two separate professions producing two separate papers. What an agency hands you is an appraisal, drawn from local evidence and worth exactly what the evidence is worth. What a lender, a court or the tax authority will insist on is a formal report signed by a qualified valuer. An agent who blurs the two has either misunderstood their own role or is hoping you will not ask.
If it does not sell at this, what then? A serious answer includes what evidence would prompt a review, and roughly when. An answer that treats the possibility as unthinkable is a sales technique.
There is a related trap worth knowing about. Portal-derived averages circulate widely: LankaPropertyWeb published an average of about LKR 117.6 million for a Colombo house in August 2026, but that is the portal’s average of the prices advertised on it, not a record of what buyers paid.
The same care applies to the Central Bank’s price index, up 18.5% in the first quarter of 2026. That index measures new condominiums, in Colombo District. So if an agent quotes it at you for a house in Gampaha, the comparison fails twice over: the wrong property type, and the wrong district. Ask what the connection is supposed to be, and listen to whether the answer names either.
Questions about the work
Where will it actually be seen? Portal exposure is necessary and it is not sufficient. The counts the portals themselves published, when we looked in August 2026, were 13,626+ houses for sale in Colombo on ikman and 3,600+ properties on LankaPropertyWeb, which has traded since 2007. Your listing joins that. Ask what the firm does that a listing does not do by itself.
Who qualifies buyers before they arrive? Anyone can be shown around a house. Fewer can buy it. Ask whether viewers are checked for funding and intent, and who does the checking.
Who handles it, day to day? Some firms send a senior person to win the instruction and a junior to service it. That is not automatically wrong, but you should know before rather than after.
Questions about the agreement
What is the fee, and what triggers it? Ask for the number in writing, and ask what it includes. There is no published statutory scale to quote you here, which is exactly why the question has to be asked directly rather than assumed.
How long am I tied in, and how do I get out? Length of appointment, exclusivity, notice to terminate.
Am I liable if I find the buyer myself? A reasonable question with several reasonable answers. The unreasonable version is finding out later.
The agency agreement is a contract that attaches to the most valuable thing most people own. Have a notary or an attorney-at-law read it before signature. A1 does not give legal advice and nothing here is a substitute for it.
One question about coverage
Do you actually work here? Firms advertise wide and operate narrow. A1 works in seven districts, Colombo, Gampaha, Kandy, Nuwara Eliya, Kurunegala, Galle and Matara, along with the towns inside each, and where a particular street is outside what we can genuinely service we say so rather than take the instruction and hope.
The test is easy to apply. Ask what else the firm has handled within a few streets of your property, and what those transactions taught them about the buyers there. A firm working your area will answer immediately.
Three more questions if you are letting
Instructing an agent to find a tenant is a different transaction, and these three questions change with it.
Does your service include management, or end at placement? Tenant-finding and ongoing management are separate jobs, and some firms offer only the first. A1 refers management and maintenance out, so our letting service ends when the tenant is placed. Ask any agent to state which they are offering before you sign, because the assumption is expensive to discover in month three.
Is the rental figure based on achieved rents or advertised ones? The same evidence problem as a sale price, with less published data behind it.
What applies to the deposit and rent in advance? Start from which arrangement you are in. A tenancy need not be in writing and commonly runs from month to month; a lease is fixed in term and written. Where the Rent Act, No. 7 of 1972 governs the premises, rent taken in advance is capped at three months’ authorised rent, and no premium, commission or gratuity may be charged on top of it. Whether the Act reaches your particular property is a legal question, put it to a notary or an attorney-at-law, not to your agent.
The short version, in a table
| Ask this | A useful answer contains | A weak answer sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| What is the price based on? | Completed comparable sales, current competing stock, time to sell | We know the area very well |
| Appraisal or valuation? | A clear statement of which, and who provides the other | Our valuation is very accurate |
| What is the fee and when is it due? | A written figure, what triggers it, what is included | We can discuss that later |
| What if it does not sell? | The evidence that would prompt a review, and when | It will sell |
| What do you refer out? | Conveyancing, formal valuation, ongoing management | We handle everything |
| What would stop this selling? | Something specific about your property or its papers | Nothing we can see |
The question that tells you most
Ask what would stop the property selling.
An agent who has genuinely done the work will name something concrete: three near-identical units already advertised on your road, an extent recorded on the deed that a current survey would contradict, a shared access nobody has documented, a buyer pool that thins sharply above a particular figure. An agent who says nothing at all comes to mind has looked at the postcode, not the property.
The same test applies to costs. A firm that has thought about your transaction will mention, unprompted, that the buyer’s stamp duty is charged on whichever is greater, the agreed price or the assessment held by the Provincial Department of Revenue, because that affects how a negotiation plays out. One that has not will treat the price as the whole story.
Where our own answers are
These are questions A1 expects to be asked, and it is fair to hold us to them. What we do at each stage, and the three things we deliberately refer out, are set out on our services page. What we have chosen not to publish about ourselves, and why, is on the about page, including the absence of a transaction record, which we would rather state than dress up.
If you are gathering appraisals, get more than one, ask every firm the same questions, and take the agreement to a notary before you sign it. If you want ours, ask for an appraisal, it costs nothing and carries no obligation to instruct us.