Will Estate Agents Have A January Clearout?

GDB2222

Darth_Marty wrote: »

I would say that most estate agents will be looking to remarket all properties currently on their books and that will most definitely include advising price reductions amongst other things. A lot of old/over priced properties will have been taken off today due to the epc deadline as the vendors cant be bothered to pay the fee as they know that their property wont sell at the current price and they dont want to reduce. So thats a good thing.

Wasn't the EPC part of the HIP anyway?

ShelleyC_2

Unlikely that will happen agents round here seem to stuck with their heads up their @rses at the minute pretending its all going to be fine in 2009 :rotfl:

besonders1

If thats the case then it looks like Estate agents will just have to go down with their ship as they won't be selling anything

lincroft1710

Half the agents here now just seem to deal in lettings, one agent has "retreated" to upstairs office, subletting former ground floor office. Property pages have virtually disappeared from 2 local newspapers. One lettings agent offering half price rent for January. Only 1 or 2 have closed but I don't think we've seen the worst of the storm.

Davesnave

GDB2222 wrote: »

Wasn't the EPC part of the HIP anyway?

From 1st October all properties have needed an EPC. It costs about £60 as a stand-alone.

I thought it would be rubbish, but my guy was very thorough. It also came out much better than I expected. Made no difference though, as I had an acceptable offer the following week from someone who'd not seen it.

Gorgeous_George

Estate Agents NEED to sell properties at any price. It is vendors who keep the asking price high. My home isn't for sale but, offer me enough and it might be

IMHO, 2009 will see prices stabilise and the market find its correct level. 100% mortgages and FTBers will return - probably at 60% of peak prices (this excludes nonsensically priced phlats etc.).

If it doesn't, I don't care. My home is still my home.

GG

StevieJ

I was always of the impression that it was the Estate agents who did the valuation of the property, not the sellers

PasturesNew

I think what we'll start to see is what I saw at the tail end of the last downturn/upturn in prices. EAs' windows had lots of SOLD banners on the corner of the houses in the windows, to create a sense of urgency, yet if you were familiar with the properties you'd realise that a lot of them had been sold for over a year. The EAs were just keeping them in the window. I bet we start to see some of this on Rightmove, with agents not removing the sold ones, but leaving them on with a SOLD flash in the corner.

Generali

scousethife wrote: »

Theres more chance of Australia not trying to show off with some ridiculous 2 million dollar firework show than............

oh hang on they allready did

Actually it was jolly nice. A back of fag packet calculation reckons it cost about 30c (20p) for each viewer that was here live. Quite MSE really when you compare with the cost/viewer of whatever rubbish the BBC had on tonight!

Jorgan_2

StevieJ wrote: »

I was always of the impression that it was the Estate agents who did the valuation of the property, not the sellers

The agent does the valuation, but the vendor will ultimately set the asking price. If they think it is worth another £30k they will usually try and find an agent willing to market at the higher price.

Many sellers do not want to accept that their property has dropped 15-25% in the last twelve months, although they were always happy to be informed of the 15% annual increase.