People still value traditional high street agents, Rightmove’s Miles Shipside told an audience chiefly of conveyancers and property lawyers.
Speaking at the packed Property Forum Dinner in London, Shipside said that it was “vitally” important for agents to differentiate themselves.
He said: “People still like local, so agents need to offer a great brand locally and great service, and then people will choose them.
“If agents do not differentiate themselves – and it is hard when everyone is offering the same thing – then people will choose on price. And then the price goes down.”
Shipside also said of differentiation that Rightmove had managed it by adopting a simple name, putting all the properties in one place, and making sure the information was accurate.
“Our next biggest competitor then copied pretty well everything we did,” he said.
Shipside was appearing on a panel of experts at the dinner, hosted by John Pickford, managing director of Searchflow.
He warned the audience that “significant numbers” of conveyancing firms would close this year. Pickford also asked how conveyancers could work better with estate agents.
Panel member Viv Williams, of consultancy firm 360 Legal Group, said that most services offered by conveyancers were “pretty d@mn poor”.
Mike Ockenden, also on the panel, said agents and conveyancers were like oil and water but called on them to work more closely together.
Shipside said that estate agents and solicitors impacted on each others’ finances, adding: “When I told an agent I was coming here tonight, he told me that it is now taking 13 weeks to get from offer to exchange of contracts … sort it out.”
Pickford asked: “If a lawyer and an estate agent were both drowning, which one would you save?” It turned out to be a rhetorical question which was never actually put to the panel.
Paul Smee, of the Council of Mortgage Lenders, expressed little confidence in the Law Society’s new conveyancing portal.
He said: “It is quite a complicated product and we need it to be robust – and it shouldn’t be a monopoly.”
There was also criticism of the move to centralise Land Registry information away from local authorities.
Ockenden said that when asked if they were in favour “not one person in the room put their hand up, apart from Mike Westcott-Rudd”.
Westcott-Rudd, the Land Registry’s head of corporate legal services, defended centralisation – which will mean the loss of older records – saying that the reform would be “better than a ton of old deeds”.
A speaker from the floor, Jeremy Dorkins, of PSG, asked whether there were poor quality land charges staff at local councils simply hanging on for their redundancies pending the change.
And Rob Hailstone, of the Bold Group, also speaking from the floor, said: “Thirty years ago, conveyancing was more enjoyable, more profitable and a lot less stressful. It is now at breaking point with delays.”
Comments (5)
Am I right in the fact that from the tone of these comments Mr Shipside doesn't like the idea of "online agents"? Because if that is the case……why is he selling RM applicants to them to undermine the professional "local" high street agents….This guy is rapidly losing what little credibility he has managed to cling onto over the last 12 months.
I think this is a classic case of trying to befriend something that intimidates you Wilko. Miles knows full well that the online agents only exist while they can advertise property in the same places as the mainstream estate agents, so in other words he doesn't need to covert them, he has their business. He wants to be seen to be on the side of the 4000 plus offices who are currently trying to decide which portal they should remain with although so far, his words have been cautious and a little limp. Personally I think he should take a long hard look at his business plan; losing the income from the online only charlatans would cost them peanuts, but in one move, give RM the upper hand in that choice and protect the lion share of their income for the next few years at least.
Miles Shipside has no credibility left in estate agency, he will say whatever to whoever to schmooze up to whichever audience he is speaking to at the time. Right move are no friend of the high street agent- please don't ever believe that- we are simply a cash cow and if the wind of change were to ever blow more favourably towards online agency, he would pin his colours to their mast in an instant.
As agents we have a duty to ensure both prospective sellers and buyers have instructed a solicitor rather than wait for a sale to be agreed. A stitch in time as Julian O Dell wrote in one of his newsletters
A big part of the problem lies with the fact that a large majority of the lending institutions insist on using their own appointed solicitor. So a vendor has to satisfy 2 sets of solicitors – not just one. No solicitor acting for a bank or building society has any incentive other than to just "box tick".