WHY USE AN AGENCY
CLIENT BASE
BEST DEAL
KNOWLEDGE
AS A LANDLORD WHY SHOULD YOU USE AN AGENCY?
GO ONLINE ONLY AND YOU'LL MISS OUT ON BUYERS
Only around 60% of properties are sold from an online inquiry; if you want to miss out on nearly half of all buyers to reach all potential buyers, an Agency is the best way to achieve this.
Estate agents aren’t ripping people off
Your fee is performance related and paid on receipt of the sales proceeds. The average UK price is around £180,000, according to Nationwide and Halifax reports, and the average fee outside the South East is around 1%, a fee of perhaps £1,800.
You only pay fees on a sale
An online agent can take their fee upfront, often as much as £799 or more, meaning it’s gone whether the property is sold. Saving around £1,000 on a fee sounds good, but if a good agent gets you £10,000 more, then the cost pays for itself as there is no loss of money if the Agency does not sell the property.
IT'S A LOCAL GAME
Selling property is a local business; my ideal is to have two local agents on a winner take all basis, which usually produces a better result. Six or seven locally based negotiators, all with buyers they know and have qualified, are likely to get a better result than an online agent with three or four agents covering the whole country.
NAME OF THE GAME IS NEGOTIATION
Like it or not, the English don’t like talking about money and welcome someone doing it for them.
Online agents will tell you they do that, but again, how can three or four people covering the UK understand or know local nuances and have the best armory of tools to deploy on behalf of the person paying them, the seller?
IS YOUR VALUATION CORRECT
How do you gauge the correct value to market at? Local knowledge is paramount here. A historical perspective is no substitute for making a market. Agents can use the latter while online must use the former, which is not likely to yield the best price.
IN FOR THE LONG GAME
The average time from the agreed offer to the exchange is over three months. The machinations required to get a deal through are considerable and often involve detailed local knowledge. Having to deal with surveyors, solicitors, and mortgage brokers to get a deal done occupies more than half an agent’s time. This part of the service, never appropriately understood, is the engine room that sells and lets your property. There has yet to be an online offering where this phase of sale handling has been credibly offered.