Design your dream Estate Agency.

MissMotivation

Errata wrote: »

Some estate agents can sometimes behave like a new best friend - they ain't. They're doing a job of work for a customer, just like the coalman.

But building a good working relationship is important....it's why I get repeat business year after year even though I've moved companies etc.

RacyRed

Don't tell your vendors that someone is a cash buyer if they are not. Cash buyers have the cash in the bank. Full stop. They do not have a property to sell to release the equity to buy (mortgage free), do not need to borrow the money first so they then have the cash to buy. EA's should properly check the status of a buyer and of any chain they are in before offers are made and report accurately to the vendors

Don't tell your vendors that the people at the bottom of the chain are mortgage free investment buyers when they are actually FTBs who are stretching themselves to the hilt. :mad:

If a vendor accepts a lowish offer in the expectation of a speedy sale, make it your business to ensure their expectations are met. If anything goes wrong, tell them at the earliest opportunity, don't expect the solicitor or someone else to do the dirty work for you.

Cultivate a back-up buyer just in case the original sale falls through. Dont stop actively marketing unless the vendor has agreed or the sale has gone to exchange. DO NOT divert a good potential buyer to another property until you are sure the one they have expressed interest in has exchanged. Remember you work for the seller, not the buyer.

Don't tie in to rubbish mortgage advisors or conveyancers who waste your clients' time and money. It will reflect on you!

All of these things happened to me last time I sold and, as you can imagine, it wasn't an experience I'm keen to repeat.

Estate agents fees are pretty much the largest expense vendors face, remember that and treat your vendors with respect, do not view them as cash cows with an attitude problem.

Thats my twopennorth for you.

googler

rl290 wrote: »

I must admit, I was thinking about this the other day, and my opinion was (sorry OP) that I cannot see any use in estate agents for property sales. Instead, why not just have online services the connect buyers and sellers. In return for not paying a big fee, the home owner just has to conduct viewings themselves... which can be far more preferable.

Well, doesn't your scenario rely on - the owner being available to take calls at all times of the day from prospective buyers, in order to arrange the viewings, and - the owner being available to do the viewing at a time that suits the prospective buyer?

As someone said here in another thread "I'm working 42 hours a week already; when do you think I can fit this in? That's what I'll be paying an agent for" (or words to that effect)

DVardysShadow

RacyRed wrote: »

... Don't tie in to rubbish mortgage advisors or conveyancers who waste your clients' time and money. It will reflect on you!

Good point. Both as buyer and as seller, I do not want my Agent to be doing mortgages. It stinks.

jangor_2

Please keep in touch with your clients with automatic updates or advice as to how to maximise their chances of selling their property. I become so frustrated when EAs simply don't bother to make contact and I have to do all the running.

RacyRed

scooter_chick wrote: »

As a buyer - show up on time for viewings. Please! If I've travelled to the town I'm looking in, you know what - your property isn't the only one I'm seeing that day. I've got a schedule as well as you & I want to spend the time I've got for your property looking at the inside of it, not kicking my heels on the pavement outside.

Once I'm inside. Yes, I can see it's a living room. Yes, I can see it's a kitchen. Do you think I earn £enough-to-get-a-mortgate-for-this-place by being totally dumb? Tell me something interesting. (Strangely, the houses I've liked best have mostly been vendor-led viewings - why not ask the vendor what the good things about the property are if you need something to say...)

Really good points scooter_chick! I recently did a 600 mile round trip to view a number of properties over 2 days only to have the estate agents do the following: -

1. Not show up at the agreed times, or in one case, not show up at all.

2. Not check to ensure they had access to the properties I was booked to view, this happened on far too many properties :mad:

3. Only allowed 15 mins per viewing, including travelling time between properties, despite my having said I wanted a good look around first time as second viewings could be difficult to arrange!

4. And the worst of all, failed to show me ANY of the properties I'd expressed an interest in where they were exclusive agents. I was furious when I realised that! And I didn't make a return trip or use those agencies for future viewings.

krazykidskate

How about giving the vendor the option to write some of the description themselves. They live there and can identify many advantages of the house and area that might not occur to the agent. This would make the descriptions less clinical and more quirky and helpful. Also give the option of them providing their own photos if they have some really special ones. Nothing worse than an EA coming round and taking photos that don't do your house justice because its overcast or the blinds are closed/ open etc or the wrong time of year, when you have some lovely photos yourself.

How about capturing many features of the house and allowing potential buyers to search on these such as garage, conservatory, off road parking, 2 bathrooms, etc. as well as the usual criteria. I'm only really familiar with rightmove and they just let you search on number of bedrooms location and price (as far as I know). I think this option would appeal to people that are not really looking to move but if something came up that ticked all the boxes they just might be.

adg1

Match requirements and don't bracket people by their budget.

Call people back when you say you will.

Listen to your clients and applicants - todays applicant is tomorrows client etc.

ACKNOWLEDGE people as they walk in. Greet them, make them feel welcome.

Don't harbour any opinions on anything be that people or property.

Tell people if you are going to be late for something.

Keep all people involved in the loop at all times.

Oh and do not lie. It'll always come back and bite ya plus you'll look like a tit.

Estate_Agent

Wow. Thanks so far. Some of you really don't like estate agents do you?

This is what we already do:

1.Give the vendor the choice of accompanied or unaccompanied viewings - apparently not everyone trusts us with their home.
2. Pay for a professional photographer.
3. Ask the vendor to help with the property description - it's their house we're selling, not ours.
4. We don't recommend solicitors or mortgage brokers - but will say if we have a good working relationship with them.
5. We don't try to sell them one of our houses if thats not right. We will search the property portals with them, even if they end up buying through another agent.
6. All calls are returned.
7. All vendors are contacted weekly - even if there have been no viewings.
8. All applicants are called fortnightly - even if we haven't got a property for them.
9.All properties are advertised online and in the press. We will also email or post new properties to our applicants when appropriate.
10. If they want a two bed flat we don't sell them a three bed house. It's not clever.

I forget what else we do but its probably pretty good as well.

The average fee in the area is 2%. From easter we introduce a three tier structure. The service remains the same, its only the advertising that changes. At 1.2% we can't provide professional photography. At 1.5% we can, plus premium listings on the property portals. 1.75% will be joint. Again, there are other points that I forget, but at the moment my soon-to-be-two-year-old is trying to introduce one of the moggies to baked beans.And he's not trying to make her eat them.

What else do I want to do?

We will be doing a moving box for sellers and buyers stocked with tea-bags to binliners for the first day in the house. A six monthly email to every email address we have - unless they opt out - giving everything from state of the market to FTB advice etc.

I'd like to look at sponsoring a charity for every sale.

A lot of ideas will pay dividends over the next few years. I am a big believer in good sustainable growth not building a house of cards.

What I need - before the beans really start flying - is how to let everyone near me know about us and how good we can be, as well as any ideas I've missed.

Thanks for reading this far to those that did.

rlm_3

Don't judge people on appearances. I look very young for my age. When unaccompanied by my husband I didn't get taken seriously by EAs. They also made assumptions about how what type of jobs we had and how much we could afford, and were initally suspicious when we stated a higher-than-expected budget.

Which leads me on to another point: Make sure you get people's names right. When completing the paperwork for the house we currently rent, my OH and I gave our titles as Dr. It might be a bit pretentious but we both have PhDs, and certainly in my experience it tends to influence how people behave towards me (especially given how young I look). When we came to sign the contract, they had put our names as Mr and Miss (we weren't married at that point). The LA even said "I know you put Dr on the application but we've put Mr and Miss on the contract". Why? Did she not believe us? Did she think it neccessary to highlight that we were not married?

I'm probably coming across as a bit hyper-sensitive now but one final thing that really annoyed me was when I arranged a viewing with an EA that already had my OH's details on file. They rang my husband for feedback on the property. For all they knew, I could have been viewing the house as a love-nest for my bit on the side and myself!