Wed 12 Dec 2018

The Evolution of Property Sales

There has been a significant increase in the number of people using online agents to market their property in the last 18 months. In fact, the number of vendors choosing to sell their homes this way doubled in the last five years.  This could be partially due to the increase in the number of online only agencies.  Crucially, the question that needs answering is “will an online only agency sell my property?”

We’re not here to bash the competition – online agencies definitely have a place in the industry. In fact, we think that competition from all fronts is the basis on which any business continues to grow and develop its own services.  We’re interested in recent findings from industry experts and national portals that have researched sales statistics from these two types of agencies. 

All of the Stats

Zoopla published it’s “State of the Nation” report in November where it revealed the following key statistics:

• Almost two thirds of vendors would opt to use an online agent to sell their home;
• 44% of renters have used the services of an online letting agent.

Perhaps most interestingly, despite the popularity of these agents, only 19% of vendors successfully sold their property using solely an online agent.

The Advisory *– an independent consumer advice group for house sellers recently published findings based on a study looking at passive intermediaries versus local estate agents.  It stated that high street agents:

• Generate 48% more viewings;
• Obtain 64% more offers;
• In 73% of cases achieve a 5% higher sale price.

Its most critical output was that if you use those figures on a representative sale price of £250,000 sale, that translates to a loss of £12,500 using an online only agent.

What Does Online Mean?

As the name would suggest, online only agents are reliant on online portals to market and subsequently sell a property they have on their books.  This means that a prospective buyer must match their search criteria exactly with the selling features listed against those properties in order to even view it online.

It would be rare to come across a high street agent that didn’t also have a presence on one or more of the national property portals such as Zoopla, Rightmove or OnTheMarket.com.  Therefore, you could make the conclusion that using a high street agent gives you the best of both worlds.  

Zoopla reported that 51% of surveyed estate agents are feeling the heat on maintaining their fee levels as a result of increased pressure by clients to compete with online only agents.  It’s important to remember, many online agency fees (typically around £850) do not offer a no sale no fee payment option whereas a great benefit to using high street agents is that they do!

Perhaps these findings showing how much more money a vendor can make on their sale by using a traditional agent.  High street agent fees are often lower than you think; it is best to ask an agent to value your property and provide a quote in person.  That way, you can get a tailored response to your property and your needs, rather than a standard menu based price format.

 

*The Advisory latest guide is here: