Lists of criteria for choosing a broker all look alike: experience, network, listening skills, market knowledge. Everyone ticks every box, and none of it sets them apart. What really sets them apart comes down to one sentence: what an agency agrees to put in writing. A price rationale, a list of commitments, clear terms — or adjectives.
What a broker actually does
The job comes down to five tasks, and it is in their execution that agencies differ, not in their description.
Setting a defensible price. Not the most flattering price: the one you can justify line by line to a buyer who negotiates. This requires a method — a pricing grid, coefficients, named discounts — not intuition presented as experience.
Preparing the property before showing it. A complete technical file, PPE (condominium) documents, plans, an assessment of works to be planned. A buyer who has to ask three times for the same document concludes that the seller is hiding something, and negotiates accordingly.
Approaching buyers who already exist. Publishing a listing is not the same as looking for a buyer. An up-to-date database of qualified buyers, whose criteria are known, allows a property to be presented even before it is published — and sometimes sold without ever being advertised.
Conducting the negotiation. This is the only point at which the agency concretely gains or loses money for the seller: holding a price, or giving in at the first argument. An offer is handled in writing, with its conditions and duration.
Coordinating what follows. Bank, notary, timeline, conditions precedent: a sale fails more often over logistics than over price.
What the Code of Obligations already guarantees you
What remains is knowing what protects you if things don’t work out. Your contract with an agency is a brokerage agreement (art. 412 CO), and three articles protect the principal without any need to negotiate them.
The broker is only paid if they actually served a purpose. Article 413 paragraph 1 ties payment to the conclusion of the contract resulting from their referral or negotiation. No causal link, no remuneration.
A broker who serves the other party loses everything. Article 415 makes them forfeit both payment and reimbursement of expenses if they act in the interest of the other contracting party in disregard of their obligations, or if they secure from that party a promise of remuneration contrary to the rules of good faith.
Excessive remuneration can be reduced. Article 417 expressly covers the sale of real estate: the court may, at the debtor’s request, equitably reduce excessive payment.
One article, however, deserves your vigilance rather than your trust: paragraph 3 of article 413. If reimbursement of the broker’s expenses has been agreed, these costs are owed even if the deal does not go through. This is lawful, it is common, and it is the most overlooked line in a mandate. The mandate in detail, article by article.
The five questions that really set brokers apart
1. What sales have you concluded, where, and when? Not “we know the municipality well”: transactions, a municipality, a period. An agency active in the Left Bank can name its areas and properties.
2. What is your valuation based on? The only good answer is a visible rationale: which pricing grid, which range, which value adopted within it, which discounts and why. A figure without its reasoning will be of no use to you the day a buyer challenges it.
3. What do you do before publishing? The answer distinguishes an agency that prepares a sale from one that simply puts a listing online: preparing the property, the technical file, approaching buyers already known, and any off-market presentation.
4. What exactly does the mandate contain? Duration and renewal method, the expenses clause and its cap, the definition of what triggers remuneration, and the written list of what the agency commits to doing. A commitment without obligations on the other side is not a partnership.
5. Are you paid by anyone else on this transaction? A direct question, a written answer. Article 415 makes this a legal question, not a matter of trust.
Three warning signs
The highest valuation. A price announced above the market without any figures to justify it is not a compliment to your property: it is the simplest way to secure a mandate. The property then sits online for months, its public history accumulates, and the price cut comes once the negotiation is already lost.
A fee presented as standard. Remuneration is a matter of agreement between the parties. An agency that quotes a “usual” fee without relating it to what it is actually committing to for your property is really telling you it has not worked it out.
Vagueness about costs. If no one is willing to put in writing what remains payable if no sale takes place, article 413 paragraph 3 will answer for you — and not in your favour.
What you can check for yourself, free of charge
Geneva publishes property acquisitions with open access, 24 hours a day, updated in principle every Friday. You therefore do not have to take an agency’s word for its actual activity: the information is public. How to consult the land register and what it contains.
Also look at what an agency publishes about itself: dated and located sales are worth more than a total figure without detail. Our sales, municipality by municipality.
The right order of operations
Value first, choose second. A seller who knows the value of their property and the reasoning behind it is not swept along by the most flattering valuation — they ask the five questions above and compare answers, not figures.
Having your property valued takes a few minutes and shows the calculation in detail. Only then, speak to a broker — armed with what you need to judge their answers.