So just who and where do we search to get our figures?

The answer is that we look at the internet.

Yes, estate agents use property boards to advertise homes for sale and they put details in their windows and in the local newspaper, but now, more and more, people are using the internet.
Gone are the days when people’s property searches began by peering through the estate agent’s window. For many, the starting point is instead the World Wide Web, and they do this by using one of the many property portals on the Web that allow us all to search for homes marketed by various estate agents by size, price and location.

The biggest of them all, according to the number of properties on its website, is Rightmove. It had more than 980,000 for sale in the UK in August 2007, according to a study by the City analyst Clear Capital – about three times as many as each of its main rivals, FindaProperty.com, Primelocation and Propertyfinder.com. The sites all work on the same principle, charging agents a fee to post properties and encouraging users to register (providing agents with a useful list of leads in the process).

In other words: If you are looking for a good local estate agent to sell your home, if they are the leading agent with their on-line presence then it stands to reason that they are the sort of agent you should be considering to sell your home.

The ForSaleSignReport that supplies the data to TopSellingAgent.co.uk looks at properties on the market and advertised on the six leading UK property portals, including:

• Rightmove
• Primelocation
• Propertyfinder.com
• FindaProperty.com
• Fish4homes
• Hotproperty