Well, you may or may not know that two of our biggest bones of contention with the traditional estate agent model are:
A: The fact that agents are predominantly responsible for valuing homes on the UK market, despite the fact that their fee is a percentage of that valuation. SEO Denver . This gives them an incentive to falsely inflate values
B: Their monopoly over the market, which is finally being challenged by online estate agents and private sales portals.
When you combine the two you can see why some people (not us… pass a drug test for weed . Dan Alhanti . oh no, we would never be so presumptuous) blame estate agents for prices becoming so inflated that severe corrections (crashes) become necessary.
Meanwhile we have the new wave of online estate agents, which charge a fixed fee for their services. This is typically on a stepped basis, with the lowest fee being purely for online advertising on their own website and/or a selection of portals, and larger packages including more portals, and packages including the agents conducting price negotiations and viewings on your behalf.
The most important things being that the customer saves money, because the fixed fees are lower than 1-2% of the average property value and gets a fair price and the best service from the agent, because there is no onus on them to inflate the value, and it is in their best interests to sell quickly to increase turnover.
This is why we are rooting on them… If their success can surpass that of traditional agents then we will likely see more traditional estate agents start charging a fixed fee.
In the meantime, online estate agents are the perfect centre between private sales and traditional agents. Private sales is less expensive and if done properly can bring a good price and a quick sale, but, because private sales sites can’t list on the agent-oriented portals like Rightmove and Findaproperty, there can often be a lot of work required. Online agents can list on Rightmove and Findaproperty, but — again — the seller pays less in order to do so.
