How high street agents view their strengths and weaknesses compared to onliners

Here is the third and final part of the recent research, conducted through EYE, on high street firms’ attitudes towards their online competitors.

The survey was carried out by independent researcher Mark Notari and was a follow-up to one he did two years ago as part of a thesis for a Masters degree.

The last part of the survey examines how high street agents view their performance in relation to the disruptive influence of onliners, and where they feel some of their advantages and disadvantages lie.

The new survey shows that high street agents still view having a local presence as one of their strengths, as well as having better market knowledge.

However, there appeared to be slightly less conviction that offering a broad range of services is something that marks high street businesses out from their online competitors.

x

Email the story to a friend



11 Comments

  1. nextchapter

    Those results are obvious.  You take a bunch of ignorant, arrogant, blind sighted, self obsessed Estate Agents and ask them if they’re weak against online Estate Agents – what do you expect them to say. ‘Do not compute’ ‘Strongly disagree,’ obviously!

    Report
    1. PeeBee

      We’ll put you down as a “Don’t Know”, then…

      Report
      1. Jackbattersby52

        Not at all, to some extent, very much so, don’t know.

        Report
    2. fluter

      “You take a bunch of ignorant, arrogant, blind sighted, self obsessed Estate Agents”. So you know all the people who took part do you Nextchapter? Or is this a personal comment from you based on guesswork, with no actual knowledge whatsoever of the people you are referring to? Read your comment back and look in the mirror!

      Report
    3. PeeBee

      “You take a bunch of ignorant, arrogant, blind sighted, self obsessed Estate Agents”.

      OOOOOOOOHH! Is that fighting talk, nextchapter?

      Come on then – I’m ready to rumble with you.

      Tell me – just how “ignorant” and “blind-sighted” of basic business acumen were you when you fixed your previous Fee packages to require such large increases – £1000 (+40%) for your BASIC package and £1500 (+30%) for your “Gold Service” offering from that of a year ago?

      And just how “arrogant” and “self-obsessed” are you to believe that you can ask for such inflation-busting increases in your charges – when your customer gets absolutely nothing more in return to that of a year ago?

      To you…

      Report
      1. PeeBee

        Here’s a frankly cringeworthy offering from ‘nextchapter’, taken from a July 2017 post:

        “Purple bricks and others have had to increase their fee structure since launching.  So how the hell can a cheaper fee structure possibly work? It’s embarrassing.”

        Seeing as that was around the time you increased your own Fee packages by the percentages shown above, nextchapter doesn’t understand the concept of embarrassment – at least when it comes to embarrassing oneself.

        Nor of irony, it seems.

        Report
  2. JustPlainSavage04

    I really miss the Beast from the East.

    Report
  3. Countrybumpkin

    But on liners don’t exist anymore – they all call themselves hybrids! Soon they will have a high street office to actually try and compete on a level playing field with proper agents. Hurrah they have worked out finally that on lining can’t make a profit.

    Report
    1. PeeBee

      “Soon they will have a high street office to actually try and compete on a level playing field with proper agents.”

      Some already do!

      Report
  4. AgentV

    ‘To what extent do you agree with the following statement;

    Charging higher agency fees is one of my weaknesses when competing against online agents’

    could have been worded better;

    ’To what extent do you agree with the following statement;

    Charging realistic agency fees is one of my weaknesses when competing against call centre listers’

    Report
    1. PeeBee

      “could have been worded better;”

      The entire exercise could have been done sooo much better – but they never are.  Okay it lacks thought and structure – but at least this guy ran his through a spellcheck – most I have been sent over the years appeared to have been written by nine year-olds and not ‘scholars’.

      This is a typical ‘padding out’ exercise for a Dissertation.  The questions are largely meaningless hence their lack of depth.  It’s just ‘scores on doors’, I’m afraid.  Numbers that serve little purpose but the graphs look pretty.

      The only important statistic is that in 2017, 7.4% more Agents had better things to do with their time than fill in this survey than the previous year…

      …which can only be a good sign, surely?

      Report
X

You must be logged in to report this comment!

Comments are closed.

Thank you for signing up to our newsletter, we have sent you an email asking you to confirm your subscription. Additionally if you would like to create a free EYE account which allows you to comment on news stories and manage your email subscriptions please enter a password below.