Are estate agents getting a bad rap?

Yes they should exercise care and expertise John but unfortunately do not always do so. Solicitors do however have a habit to overcharge their clients just as much as the estate agents do. Although on purely conveyancing the estate agent wins hands down over the solicitor on charges.

Seems the agents might be reading this John? It would be interesting to hear arguments in favour of commission-based fees; I am sure there are sound arguments for and against different methods.

Just another ‘aside’ – wondering if the bigger property web sites base their charges on the asking price for a house ?

I can imagine the charges mount up, if a property is listed for many months, but surely on the other side, an agent with 500 properties listed probably pays less per property than an agent with 200 properties, so can anyone give a rough figure per month, for a house costing, say, £150,000 ?

Given there are 3 or maybe more web sites, anyone able to suggest the range (eg site A charges £10/ per £100,000 property, per month, site B charges £12.50, etc) Strikes me that while an agent may have to leave a property online for a few extra months if they ever artificially gave a higher price recommendation, the benefit for them could be tens of times more than the cost for promoting it, even if it took 3-6 months longer to sell…

Vendor knows nothing about the actual costs, and while a vendor could place their own adverts, they’d have fewer viewings than a similar property listed on one of the widely used ‘major’ sites (compared with them using their local paper, Gumtree, Friday Ad site, etc).

This is not a general or individual criticism, but an area where the consumer knows little about the profit levels of estate agents. Services charging a fixed fee seem far fairer to me, but even so, A may charge a fixed fee of £750 and B may charge £2,000 and it will depend on local house prices in general as to whether they are considered acceptable to vendor – yet the actual costs for salaries and promotion may be very similar between two different parts of the country, so firm B could be making more profit than the energy firms, as a proportion of turnover, simply ‘because house prices are generally higher’ in their area, and yet be putting in no more effort than firm A did.

So even with fixed fees, some might be playing fair and others could be cowboys !
(not suggesting any cowboys would dream of posting here though!)

I think it is more than “a few bad apples”. In recent years I have moved, one of my sisters has moved and another sister is likely to move soon. Looking at properties (we all help with online searching as three pairs of eyes work better than one), we have all seen lots of properties with only a single photo.

Very few seem to have any floorplans (and just to see if it was down to asking price, given such wide range of prices in my area of Merseyside, did more searching, for properties well in excess of what any of us could/ would pay, eg 600,000 and up) and given how many searches are done online, perhaps from hundreds of miles away if moving because of career or other situations, I’d have thought the effort would be worthwhile, so someone can get a better feel for whether they can see changes that might make a property suitable with some building work, and draw up a shortlist of places to view.

Appreciate not everyone is good at drawing, but since measurements are being taken, in nearly all cases, it is surely not beyond possibility for floorplans to be produced ? Perhaps an estate agent can comment on the cost for getting this done, if they hire in some help… ?

Hello, Online marketing is the key to getting these homes sold.

Poor pictures, and a poor write up are not acceptable. Like you say we are now open to the worlds eyes. The pictures and write up should each be treated as a marketing exercise. Its quite simple, create a desire. Poor pictures do not do this. Show them what your house is made of!!

I love this, troubleshooting to enable houses to sell is a key part of my job. I love the feeling of showing an owner how we market their house, and seeing them shocked that they don’t get this everywhere else. We have a unique advantage as estate agents to showcase homes to their full potential, it should be done as standard. Never ever accept less than the best. If you aren’t happy, speak up. You cannot be charged for a service you are not receiving.

I hope that I can lead by example in my area. Competition brings out the best in agents. Let’s up the ante.

As for floorplans, there are many software providers that do this for free online. It is not rocket science. If you measure right, it works!! They can be knocked up easily in 10-15 minutes depending on the property.

Estate agentsv have software that makes floorplans very easy once the dimensions and room layout have beenrecorded. Agents that can’t employ somebody capable of doing that don’t deserve to be i business.

Floorplans are crucial for house-hunters but some firms steadfastly refuse to produce them because, as they have explained it to me, they think “people should make an appointment to view a property with the agent’s representative/negotiator in order to appreciate all the features and the excellent value of the property”. The internet has made it not just possible but very easy for people to consider properties over long distances and the floorplan is an essential pre-selector tool that enables prospective buyers to create a suitable shortlist for detailed viewings. In 2012, when we were looking for a property within thirty miles of Norwich, the choice, in our bracket of the market, was enormous and any property without a floorplan was rejected outright. We also wished we could have, but never got, a large scale OS plot plan to show the relationship of the property to other structures, road lines, boundaries, and other important details. Property auctioneers seem to be able to do it but house-selling agents [sometimes in the same office!] must think we wouldn’t be able to make any sense of such complicated things which are best left to surveyors and valuers.

“Hello, Online marketing is the key to getting these homes sold.”

Well… I wouldn’t expect anything else said from an ONLINE Agent, with no street presence; no press advertising – and no way of “selling” property if the internet goes bang one day.

In another post you state “I’m an estate agent, and I agree. We do not penalise those with more expensive houses by using a percentage”

SEMI correct. Instead, you “penalise those with more expensive houses” by charging A HIGHER FIXED FEE. Why would THAT be – you agree that it is unfair to penalise based upon price-band?

Thank you PeeBee

I think you will still find that our fees are extremely competitive. We are not just and ONLINE agent. We are a local agent without a shop front. Hence the reason our fees are lower than our counterparts. We do everything your high street agent does. We value, we do the viewings, online agents are natiowide, they dont do the viewings, they dont do the photographs and in some cases they still charge more.

Just so you know. Newspaper adverts are there for the sellers, it is a branding exercise and not a method of selling houses. If this was the case all the houses would be on the adverts. One of the biggest agents in our area, does not advertise in our area in the newspaper, the 3rd biggest only puts in 6 houses per week.

Our fixed fees benefit our sellers by enabling them to budget properly.

Everyone has a different view and I understand this. 96% of all property searches start online, we still have the second best method to find people houses, our buyer list, to match buyers with houses.

A ha..the online search..well this is interesting cover for what often can go on and the BIAS around information ie favours and exclusion of other buyers

I assume my comment on july 15 will account for the other 4%…or probably more..ie the propery ‘search’ which involves going into estate agent and being favoured with information about new properties…to the exclusion of many buyers/searchers signed up for ages faithfully checking out ONLINE, and ringing in. Noticeable of course around the desirable properties…
Then there’s the online search which provides us with al lthose properties we want..but which infuriatingly ARRIVE on line UNDER OFFER.
can you comment on my post of above date

That is total, unadulterated rubbish.

What you demonstrate as your ‘knowledge’ of Estate Agency can quite easily be written on the back of a flea with a five-inch paintbrush.

So… a commentator is okay to basically accuse “a high proportion of agents” of rogue practice but I am not allowed to offer any defence.

Says it all about Which’s position, really.

Hi Anise
I couldn’t agree with you more (along with a lot of other like minded agents in England and Wales). There are, in fact, qualifications in estate agency up to degree equivalent level but, sadly, they are not compulsory.

At my firm, and many other professional firms, I insist that all of my team work towards their qualifications and, they are not allowed to value or advise customers until I am happy they meet a good standard of competence, skills and knowledge.

The problems arise when you are competing with agents who believe that by employing unskilled, unqualified ‘cheap’ staff you can deliver the same standard of service and advice. I know that there are many occasions where we have negotiated a much higher figure for our customer than they would have achieved with a competitor and, have also spotted significant opportunities for sellers, such as identifying highly valuable potential building plots that other, less skilled agents have completely failed to spot (or have kept quiet about with the hope of developing it themselves). There is also the issue of liaising with everyone in a chain to keep a sale together when they hit the inevitable problems.

Unfortunately, a great deal of what we do as agents, is not seen by the public so, the appearance can be that we do little for our fee. As you say, some agents thoroughly deserve this but not all of us.

There are good agents out there but sellers must do their ground work to ensure they choose a good, competent firm with trained experienced staff to help them.

Chris Wood
PDQ Estates Ltd

Ah, but what are “typical” commission charges in the USA ? I expect there is variation from state to state, and no doubt different rates of state taxes too. Am I imagining it, or are some fees in N America as much as 8% ?? Sounds closer to Auctioneer charges.

While the professionalism may be higher, and attention to detail perhaps a lot higher, I wonder if it justifies several times the level of fees being paid?

I must dispute this comment about the money held in solicitors’ accounts. Having worked for a conveyancing solicitor for nearly 25 years I know that very little interest is earned on these monies and at completion all monies are paid out on the day of completion to agents, mortgage companies and of course for the new property. Solicitors do not earn any better rates than the normal saver and mostly it is nothing at all as nowadays exchange and completion can be within days rather than, as it used to be, several weeks.

From bitter experience I would not trust an agent as far as I could throw him/her.

I like the sound of the service your firm provides, Annabel. Garden plans! . . . that’s a revelation and really useful; the photographs usually don’t show enough or they are so distorted as to make short small gardens look like prairies.

I cannot understand why agents can’t or won’t do proper photographs of bedrooms. When viewing a property it is usually the bedrooms that don’t seem to correspond with the images in the agent’s particulars because there is a mass of cupboard oversailing the bed, or there is a violently blue wall with “Tottenham Hotspur” in big letters painted on it, or there are lengths of electrical trunking serving additional socket outletssuggesting the original circuits are inadequate. Most agents appear to take the view that so long as there is a nice picture of a big bed covered in cuddly toys and cushions. Bathrooms are often another disappointment because the photographer wants to show a pile of folded towels rather than the stained and curled-up flooring round the loo. I suspect that, when the Property Misdescriptions Act was repealed, agents thought they could be a bit more economical with the truth and more flamboyant with the descriptions, overlooking the fact that they come fully within the scope of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations. These regulations are much less prescriptive but place a general duty on agents to provide the information a prospective purchaser might reasonably require. In particular, it is no longer sufficient for agents not to mis-describe or misrepresent aspects of the property: neither should they leave out important information nor conceal relevant details that consumers need in order to make informed decisions. The get-out here is that no one in their right mind buys a house without looking at it and, obviously, the property speaks for itself; as agents always say “an early viewing is recommended to avoid disappointment”. I feel that substituting “guarantee” for “avoid” would bring them closer into compliance with the legal requirements perhaps.

We are moving away from brochures that have long boring descriptions in, who is really interested in where the telephone points are, photographs are the main items in our brochures, together with the floor and garden plans, take a look at our standards on our website karltatler.com u can down load one, the same standard for the lower priced properties to the top end properties too!

Thank you Annabel. I disagree with you about telephone points. It is extremely useful to know not only which rooms have them but where they are. The same goes for TV aerial points and power sockets.Good floor plans will show these details. It is also useful to know at the outset what the sellers are leaving or taking with them. Some friends of ours are hoping to buy a house where the owners have said they intend to take the fitted curtain poles but leave behind the free-standing gas cooker, the dishwasher, some big shelving, and a dozen Koi Carp in the pond. These are all unwanted and need to be removed in order to give vacant possession but it has caused friction; the agents have washed their hands of any involvement but in my view it would have been advantageous to the sale process if they had established the position and advised the homeowner what to do in the first place. New owners don’t want the trouble and expense of getting rid of the previous owners’ discards. The market is too fragile at the moment to accommodate that sort of imposition. Perhaps agents disagree.

You also need to know where radiators are located. However, if the description of the basic house is to your liking, then I suggest these details are best seen in the flesh at your viewing. Anything you remain unsure about, or forgot to check, can be seen on a second viewing if you are interested. Best to make up a check-list before you view to ensure anything important is not overlooked.

I agree Malcolm, the point is the brochure is intended to get the applicant over the door and the fixtures and fittings list is for the details of what is left or taken, the offering stage is the time that extras are negotiated, surely the closer the potential purchaser is to the asking price, the more a vendor is likely to leave more behind. There can be no ambiguity as to what is left if it is not left in the brochure, I have never had anyone give us feedback that they didn’t offer on a property because there wasn’t enough telephone points,

I accept that from the agent’s point of view the crucial thing is to get a buyer interested enough to view the property and a degree of creative description, enticement, and selectivity over what to reveal are some of thedevices employed for that purpose. However, since it costs next to nothing to include more detail in the description that appears on an on-line property platform I am a bit mystified by the resistance to putting in more of the information that a prospective purchaser might consider useful. Does the seller really want to put off a cash buyer with no chain who won’t even look at the property because the agent’s particulars were inadequate? I suspect that only a tiny percentage of the overall number of hits on a property website lead to viewings. Outside London and the south-east the market is not exactly hot. We had a choice of over a hundred houses in our price bracket and location radius when we were house-hunting in 2012. We had to whittle them down to a manageable shortlist to make viewings practical. Any particulars that didn’t give us the key details of every room were rejected. What sellers might not realise in a buyer’s market is that once house-hunters have discovered that an estate agency is not doing the best for their clients, is issuing inadequate particulars, and is leaving important things to be discovered at the first viewing, then we don’t want to deal with them anymore and won’t even look at the other properties it has on offer. In our part of the country there are so many properties on the market that are virtually interchangeable in terms of acceptability that buyers really can pick and choose and they want the information that enables them to do that.

In rural areas, visits can involve round trips of 60 miles or more within the same county; we sold our house in south Norfolk to somebody from the west coast of Wales – they did all their house-hunting on-line apart from the final three properties which they viewed. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I think our house was top of the shortlist [against a lot of competition] because I made sure the agent’s particulars were as comprehensive as possible and left out nothing significant.

I do not know why plans don’t generally show the orientation of houses. It’s important when considering natural lighting of rooms and the suitability of the garden. It’s useful to have this information when producing a shortlist of houses to view or even inspect externally. Providing the full address is useful for various reasons, so why just give the street, as many agents do.

I agree that the location of power points is important. Telephone points are less important now that cordless phones are popular.

Being a cautious individual, I don’t think I would trust a survey done for the seller.

Thank you so much for your kind words, we refuse to compromise on quality and guide our clients through the presentation of their properties. One of our listers has even been known to iron curtains for the client! If our director isn’t happy with anything we have produced then its straight back to take them again! We have won awards at the estate agents of the year awards for 8 years running, this encourages us to keep on reinventing ourselves, we will not compromise on fees as obviously this all costs money, so unfortunately we do lose instructions to agents who promise the earth for 0.0002%!! They cannot compete on quality and the clients invariably come back to us! We can launch a property live on the Internet within a half an hour of a measure up and one I measured up today was matched to over a hundred applicants within an hour! Our software enables a very proactive service! As u can probably tell I am passionate about what we do!

Very impressed too and pleased to see you , despite very high service values, are still making profit to stay in business.

The only caveat I have is a plan normally comes with some scale so I would suggest widthe of plot and depth in the garden as an improvement …. minor but as you like to keep improving ; )

We were so exasperated about this we took our complaint to The Property Ombudsman on principle. It took 9 months to get an outcome but our complaint was upheld in part although the amount of the award was only £100 which was paid promptly by Country Properties Welwyn Garden City. We did however feel vindicated that it was right to make a complaint.