If you’re planning to buy a home soon, you might assume the best place to start is on the property portals, Rightmove, Zoopla, or OnTheMarket. But the truth is, the savviest buyers are seeing homes long before they ever appear online. Here’s why registering with an agent puts you one step ahead.

The new annual surcharge on homes over £2m has been positioned as a targeted, progressive measure, yet this is overwhelmingly a London and South East tax. Outside those areas, the proportion of £2m homes barely registers.

If you have ever thought about selling your Shepperton home, you will know how tempting it can be to stretch the asking price. After all, it is your biggest tax-free asset, and those extra few thousand pounds can feel like a sensible cushion. Yet in the Shepperton property market, ambition can sometimes cost more than it earns.

Some homes in Shepperton fly off the market within weeks. Others sit for months, attract only a handful of viewings, then quietly disappear from the portals, unsold. The difference isn’t luck, it’s sellability.