Board or no Board?

Sapindus

A more indirect advantage of having a board - it benefits the estate agency and raises their profile.  Which in turn has a tiny effect on their advertising budget and therefore your costs, and may benefit others who are trying to sell their house - people passing through think "that agent has quite a few houses for sale round here, we'll check out their website."

Of course, lots of people have the attitude "I don't see why I should give the agent free advertising".  But I have known people turn their supermarket carrier bags inside out for the same reason, there's nowt so queer as folks...   

eddddy

Sapindus said:
A more indirect advantage of having a board - it benefits the estate agency and raises their profile.
....

Of course, lots of people have the attitude "I don't see why I should give the agent free advertising". 

Yep. When I negotiate fees with estate agents, they sometimes make it part of the deal. 

They agree to a lower fee, but part of the deal is that I have to agree to having their board outside.

(If I was bothered, I guess I could try negotiating harder - and insisting on a lower fee and no board!)

lookstraightahead

MikeJXE said:

Before Rightmove a board was the way to go but not anymore except for locals who don't do the internet 

Totally disagree with this.
As I always choose area over house I use rightmove after I've gone round the area, using a map and going up and down every road/street possible.

Boards are my first idea of what's for sale, along with atmosphere.
Houses on photos are like airbrushed magazines. Not the real thing.
choosing a house just off the internet is narrowing your opportunity.

'locals who don't do the internet' l'm not even sure what that means? 

eddddy

user1977 said:

Or agents/sellers could just put the flipping address in the listing, rather than acting like it's a big secret when they've published a photo of the house, and things like Streetview exist...

The Rightmove platform 'knows' the full address of each property - I think there are a few reasons why it doesn't display it.

If Rightmove displayed full addresses, other companies could use screen scraping software to easily harvest thousands of addresses and other property details automatically.

Rightmove (and their partners) store and retain huge amounts of information about every property listed on their portal. They sell that information to Credit Reference Agencies, Banks, Valuers, etc.

They don't want to make it easy for other companies to scrape the full address and property details, and start building their own database, and potentially start selling the information in competition with Rightmove.




Also, I guess it's to avoid giving a ready-made mailing list to every Online Estate Agency, 'We Buy Any House' company, etc. (As well as to every mortgage broker, conveyancing firm, removal firm, etc)

Again, those companies could simply scrape thousands of addresses from the Rightmove portal, for doing mailshots.

Even if Rightmove only showed street number and no postcode, there are loads of automated bulk address validation/completion systems available, which could add the full correct postcode.

 

user1977

eddddy said:

user1977 said:

Or agents/sellers could just put the flipping address in the listing, rather than acting like it's a big secret when they've published a photo of the house, and things like Streetview exist...

If Rightmove displayed full addresses, other companies could use screen scraping software to easily harvest thousands of addresses and other property details automatically.

Rightmove (and their partners) store and retain huge amounts of information about every property listed on their portal. They sell that information to Credit Reference Agencies, Banks, Valuers, etc.

They don't want to make it easy for other companies to scrape the full address and property details, and start building their own database, and potentially start selling the information in competition with Rightmove.
 

That all makes sense, but look at how much easier it is as a buyer when you have a platform which (usually) gives the full addresses: https://espc.com/properties

gwynlas

I hate boards and have never allowed them when selling I hate them even more when they are used as fly posting ie multiple boards appearing on odd corners. If you are looking to buy these days it is so easy to use the internet and boards serve no purpose if you are moving to a new area unless you won;t see them unless you are driving through regularly and wonder why so many people are selling. If they are so eager to move out do you want to move in?

EssexHebridean

lookstraightahead said:

MikeJXE said:

Before Rightmove a board was the way to go but not anymore except for locals who don't do the internet 

Totally disagree with this.
As I always choose area over house I use rightmove after I've gone round the area, using a map and going up and down every road/street possible.

Boards are my first idea of what's for sale, along with atmosphere.
Houses on photos are like airbrushed magazines. Not the real thing.
choosing a house just off the internet is narrowing your opportunity.

'locals who don't do the internet' l'm not even sure what that means? 

I'm going to hazard a guess that it probably means local people who - for whatever reason - choose not to use the internet. Perhaps elderly people who prefer to do things "traditionally" and don't have younger family members helping them search - so if your property is a "downsizer" then that could be relevant. 

youth_leader

I was widowed and had to sell and had a board, but was nervous of people knocking on the off chance they could view.  I lived in a remote railway station which was raised above the road,  and my dog alerted me on a few occasions to people wandering around the lower garden which unnerved me.   Apparently they had 'meant' to arrange a viewing.  I had the board removed. 

lookstraightahead

gwynlas said:

I hate boards and have never allowed them when selling I hate them even more when they are used as fly posting ie multiple boards appearing on odd corners. If you are looking to buy these days it is so easy to use the internet and boards serve no purpose if you are moving to a new area unless you won;t see them unless you are driving through regularly and wonder why so many people are selling. If they are so eager to move out do you want to move in?

If I'm moving to a new area the very first thing I do is visit the area, not rightmove. So boards have always been very important (along with the internet afterwards). I see a board and then see how much it's on for, because there's no point not looking at it first for real (as pics are never the same as there's no context). 

I would in theory bypass your house initially as there would be nothing for me to trigger looking. Would see it eventually but by that time will have possibly found something else. 

youth_leader

Just back from the supermarket and a local house that's been on the market for a very long time,  appears to have ivy growing up the support!  Not the best advert for the 'on line' agent!