Payment Upfront/No commission Estate Agents

googler

Dave_Ham wrote: »

Not sure on the agressive way to ask a question, no idea is a bad idea and all that.

What's aggressive about two plain questions, as follows;

"So your proposal for a 'change in commission structure' is the creation of a new website?

How are those two things even remotely connected....?"

Dave_Ham

You are making the incorrect assumption that they look to optimise your property sale price...

Additionally, surely no-one knows your house better than you?

googler

Dave_Ham wrote: »

I will try to explain better than I did previously; My view would be that Estate Agents are essential, based upon the need to be on Rightmove for demand purposes. If therefore, buyers looked elsewhere to find a property (new independent website) then yes the Estate Agents would lose power.

Who's got the 'power'? The EAs (who pay to be on Rightmmove, and who in many quarters are up in arms over RM raising its prices whilst announcing huge rises in profits), or Rightmove, which seems to have the EAs and the public both over a barrel?


Personally, I would be happy to sell my own property and with a good solicitor there is nothing that an Estate Agent can do that I cannot.

You're a mortgage advisor, so you have some contacts with others in your line of business; you also deal with the general public on a daily basis. For the regular member of the public, who hasn't and doesn't, are you so sure this is the right way?

If you have many individual self-sellers, you lose the potential for cross-selling between an agent's inventory; i.e.a viewer sees property A, doesn't like it, agent sells them on property B or C, which either the viewer didn't know about, or are imminently coming to market. How would you achieve this, amongst other things?

So a new website would not solve the flawed process, but I would like to think that it would shift the balance of power and would like to think that buyers and sellers dealing directly, would minimise people being silly throughout the process.

... but there's folks out there launching new 'future of estate agency' self-sell or 'get you on RM cheaply' websites all the time..... a lot of which fold soon after launch - what do you think they're missing?

googler

Dave_Ham wrote: »

Additionally, surely no-one knows your house better than you?

For the average house, how many things are there about your house that

- only you will know, that
- couldn't be communicated to the EA, or that
- you wouldn't want to communicated to the EA so that they would be mentioned in the advertising for the property?

What do you have that's special about your house? Smuggler's rooms? Secret staircases? A Panic Room?

Honestly, do you really see a situation where if you were self-selling, you'd know all of this 'stuff' to tell the viewers, but if you were selling through an agent, you'd sit back and keep it to yourself?

Dave_Ham

Firstly, you may want to consider Rightmove's ownership partners...

Furthermore, I never said private selling was for everyone but if it allows people options then surely that competition is good competition. I have no idea why the self start companies have all come and gone, although I would suspect that whilst there is an appetite to sell through them if the potential buyers are not coming through the doors then it is a non runner.

As an aside, I never said I had spent years of my life researching and executing some brilliant alternative; moreover it is evident that the current system is broken and therefore if there was an easy fix it would have been done by now.

I do not know if Exhange & Mart or Auto Trader have similar conflicts, I think they may let traders and private sellers alike list for a fee??

Granted a car may not be a house, although I would know more about a house than my car - maybe just me!

Happy to hear any alternative solutions??

googler

Dave_Ham wrote: »

Firstly, you may want to consider Rightmove's ownership partners...

Yes, it was started up by some players within the EA industry; but it takes money on an ongoing from those and others in the industry, and appears to have them, in terms of the fees charged, and the 'Hobson's Choice' situation for much of the country, over a barrel.....

...... it is evident that the current system is broken

Why do you think this is 'evident'?

Dave_Ham

Really??

If you need to ask then you must be an Estate Agent, or in Scotland where in fairness the system appears to be better...

Clearly, you spend a fair amount of time on this forum and I bet you can count on one hand the amount of posts/threads where a real person submits a glowing tribute to an Estate Agent.

The industry is entirely unregulated (and this could be the issue) and therefore Pinocchio would have trouble ascertaining what is the truth and what is not...

JimmyTheWig

googler wrote: »

So, in this falling market, you're suggesting that if a house marketed at £50,000 sells at less than £41,667, the agent goes unpaid?

Yes, if an _expert_ comes round and says they think they can sell your house for £50,000 and then is only able to sell it for £41,667, I think they do not deserve anything from that sale.
If that happens then either
(a) they are not experts, in which case I may as well sell it myself and not pay an agent
(b) they deliberately over-valued it when they came to see me, with a hope that the high valuation would make me select them as my agent
or (c) they are not trying very hard to get the best price for my property.

I believe that this issues, currently, are a mix of (b) and (c).

googler

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

If that happens then either
(a) they are not experts ....
(b) they deliberately over-valued it ....
or (c) they are not trying very hard ....

I believe that this issues, currently, are a mix of (b) and (c).

Do you honestly believe that there's no other situation that could arise, apart from your scenarios a, b and c .... ? It's always the agents' fault...?

There's no other possible explanation, given the current financial situation, the current lack of suitable FTB finance, the requirement for larger deposits, the general perception that prices are falling, etc. for a house selling at less than its original asking price ...... ?

If a surveyor gave you a valuation of £50k at the outset, and you sold for £41k, would you similarly suggest that the surveyor not be paid, too?

JimmyTheWig

googler wrote: »

Do you honestly believe that there's no other situation that could arise, apart from your scenarios a, b and c .... ? It's always the agents' fault...?

There's no other possible explanation, given the current financial situation, the current lack of suitable FTB finance, the requirement for larger deposits, the general perception that prices are falling, etc. for a house selling at less than its original asking price ...... ?

But the point is that you know about these factors (you may or may not be an estate agent) and I know about these factors. Therefore I would expect an estate agent to know about these factors.
So I would expect an honest agent to come round and say "It's probably worth about £50k, but given the current financial situation, blah blah blah, you'll probably only get £42k for it." Therefore they would set their commission (based on my back-of-an-envelope calculations) at 9% of whatever it sells for above £35k.

If a surveyor gave you a valuation of £50k at the outset, and you sold for £41k, would you similarly suggest that the surveyor not be paid, too?

I would certainly say it was a poor valuation.
If a mortgage company's valuer valued a property at £50k and the company gave a 90% mortgage based on that valuation then, following reposession, the mortgage company found that the place could only have really have been sold for £41k in the first place (and so would be likely to achieve less than this at auction) I think the mortgage company would be pretty miffed. I'm not sure that that valuer would get much repeat business from that mortgage company.