Estate Agency Closures

lynzpower

City Living ( or dwellings cant remember) on HIghbury corner roundabnout London has shut its doors.

giruzz

lynzpower wrote: »

Glad to see you are still flying the flag for this thread boomer.

And what a surprise, a small, independent looking EA with cheapo orange sign opened oposite Leytonstone High Rd mainline/ TFC station 2 months ago. Went past today and its empty- but with A4 printed signs in the window saying staff wanted - im sure they must be inundated :rotfl:

Really....What a surprise.... About a month ago they showed me an house, my gf loved the property....but then the estate agent said that the 'contract fee' was £500. I said...'can I have discount? this is too much'...the answer was 'there is a credit crunch, business is not good as it used to be, we can't give discounts'.

Once the EA finished his sentence I said thank you and left.

giruzz

pizzagirl

giruzz wrote: »

Really....What a surprise.... About a month ago they showed me an house, my gf loved the property....but then the estate agent said that the 'contract fee' was £500. I said...'can I have discount? this is too much'...the answer was 'there is a credit crunch, business is not good as it used to be, we can't give discounts'.

Once the EA finished his sentence I said thank you and left.

giruzz

What's a contract fee? Were you looking to rent or buy?

giruzz

pizzagirl wrote: »

What's a contract fee? Were you looking to rent or buy?

We were looking to rent. The EA said that the fee were due to the fact that a lawyer had to prepare the contract, fee to put the bonds in a protection scheme...

giruzz

butterfly72

Cissi wrote: »

Philip Hodges in East Twickenham (used to cover Richmond) - gone & boarded up. Nearby branch in St Margarets still there, but for how long? They certainly didn't impress us when they tried to sell our house a couple of years ago... (we eventually changed to a more proactive agent, with good results)

I think the weaker ones are already starting to be weeded out!

I think Philip Hodges in Hampton Hill has also shut up shop. Its the one on the corner at the crossroads... think its Hodges.. can't quite remember.

I make an effort to peek in any EA window I'm passing and I can honestly say that I hardly ever see a customer in them nowadays! And often there is just one person working in the office. Its all grinding to a halt!:rotfl:

zcacmxi

During 2008, Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward (KFH) & Langford Russell have closed their offices in Orpington High Street, BR5.

George Proctor have closed 2 offices, one in Sydenham High Street & the other in Royal Parade Chislehurst BR7.

If you check the shops for sale link: http://www.linays.co.uk/shops.asp you will see a number of estate agents for sale, including:

Edmunds in Petts Wood (ref 3510)
Main Amis in Welling (ref 3334)
TG Baynes Sidcup (ref 2499)
KFH Orpington (ref 3467)
Robinson & Jackson Bromley (ref 2654)

To be honest, it's complete carnage around here. Even the ones that have not closed, have sacked staff, reduced opening hours (e.g. no more late nights or Sundays), reduced advertising in local paper, etc.

They have themselves to blame. There are plenty of buyers, but not at the ridiculous prices that they value at!

stubsy_2

The estate agent I had my house on the market with went bust 1 month ago, seeing lots of them closing all over the place

zcacmxi

As an agent, if you go and over value a house then you can not sell it.
If you don't sell, you make no commission. You lose your job, and the branch closes.

The agents need to realise that overvaluing houses in order to feed the greed of vendors is ultimately leading to them losing their own jobs.

Also, over the past year it couldn't have been much fun taking on loads of houses, doing lots of admin and then selling very few of them due to unrealistic valuations.

They are slowly waking up, but not before 50% of them have closed down and lost their jobs.

Antispam

stubsy signature reported please read the rules on signatures

baby_boomer

Guardian

Average sales for the last 3 months have been less than 4 per agent per month.

"In East Anglia and Wales the average in the three-month period has been nine sales."