Fixed Price Estate Agents V's Traditional Estate Agents

trolleymate

:hello: It has been collectively decided to re-open this debate with a more suitable Title.
Original thread was to consider the Tesco offerings but debate has moved on from there.
There has been plenty lively debate but we need some input from more Traditional Estate Agents and some more of the new fixed price offerings and of course online and self marketing.

Come on Agents, help us decide.

Who offers the best value for money. :question:

trolleymate

D I Y

If Google is successful in launching its new property portal will the savings of this free service be past on to the Estate Agents customers.

googler

All google seems to be doing is highlighting properties for sale in their maps, and linking said highlights to agents' websites. It doesn't seem to offer picture uploads, descriptions, other info - merely a pointer and a link for each property.

Unless there's a widespread defection from the current paid-for portals, what savings will there be?

trolleymate

D I Y

googler wrote: »

All google seems to be doing is highlighting properties for sale in their maps, and linking said highlights to agents' websites. It doesn't seem to offer picture uploads, descriptions, other info - merely a pointer and a link for each property.

Unless there's a widespread defection from the current paid-for portals, what savings will there be?

They have proposed the same offer as intermediates such as Rightmove for free, Rightmove saw a drop in share value when announcment was made.
Google has been developing its position for many years investing on the future, they will be offering home loans in the near future as well as insurancce etc.
So if Google property marketing is free this will obviously help the fixed price property agents make a bit more money improving there position to operate more profitably.
I would expect traditional agents not to let go of one branch before grabbing the next which may ensure that a larger piece of the cake is taken by the fixed price agents. With Googles power in the marketing world that is where potential buyers will look and lets face it when searching the web for anything it would be fair to suggest that Google does the filtering and directing.