We’ve come across a blog entry from Mark Colhoun, director of Belfast-based Key One Property, describing how he’s seen a dramatic, and unwelcome, change in the way a growing number of people approach the house-hunting process.
He writes:
“We have seen a big upsurge in house-hunters treating the property buying process like a dating service recently. Significant numbers of buyers are only looking at the address, price and pictures before ‘swiping right’ and requesting a viewing. Many buyers are not reading some of the basic, but important details, before asking to view.
“In many cases, had we proceeded with the viewings they would have been a complete waste of time for both the viewers and us as agents, as the properties were unsuitable. This has included buyers demanding to view properties that were sale agreed but they were unaware as they hadn’t taken the time to read that. Another example is numerous buyers searching for a home to occupy wanted to view a property which stated it came with a sitting tenant and was a buy-to-let only.
“The trend is mostly among first-time buyers and millennials. It is staggering that these buyers won’t take just a few minutes to read the vital information published by agents particularly as buying a home will be the biggest purchase most people make. It also makes a mockery of trading standards rules which requires agents to provide much of this detail – what’s the point if it’s not being read? In addition, it is highly discourteous to agents; conducting viewings is often the most expensive part of marketing a property, and for buyers to waste agents’ time like this is, well… just arrogant!
“To combat this trend, we have now had to resort to treating buyers like children and in many cases, we ask them to go back and read the information in full before we will grant a viewing.”
Are you experiencing the same thing? Do let us know in the comments whether you are having your time wasted this way and what you and your peers can do to stop it.
So true! But agents should not be encouraging applicants to re-read the sales particulars. A more dynamic approach would be for would-be buyers to be encouraged to either pick up the phone, or even better, actually walk into the agent’s branch. This allows both parties to break the ice before viewings are confirmed. Phone calls would, I understand, be more eco-friendly, especially as we are now being encouraged to delete all our emails to save water usage- allegedly. Actually visiting the agent would help justify the increasingly high costs that estate agents still incur maintaining their branches. After all, and as you say, this is probably the most expensive purchase anyone will make and a good estate agent will vet all applicants to ensure that only suitably qualified applicants take up their’s and the vendor’s valuable time.
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There’s quite a lot of ongoing research being done into the behaviour patterns of the various generations.
However, the observations are solely mine…
Boomers, like my dad, love a telephone conversation. They also tend to read and absorb important information and prefer to see it on paper.
Gen X (basically me), like a telephone conversation or emails and will often print out important info from an email. The rush around like crazy so often miss important info, but, when it matters, they’ve got it.
Millennials (my two daughters are at opposite ends of this cohort), grew up without a mobile phone. They both do emails, texts and social media, but the youngest is fully engaged whilst the oldest flicks through. Neither will initiate a phone call but will happily talk on the phone if necessary. They assume that the headline details are the one that matter and will often not read important info if it isn’t front and centre. They can be flaky with appointments, but are sincerely apologetic when it happens.
Gen Z swipe and text – they actively do not like telephone conversations or emails. They act in haste and expect to be able to cancel at a moment’s notice with other people having to deal with the fallout.
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…
to continue
Gen Z, like all before, have invented their own words, I remember “wicked” etcetera in my day. I am not nearly cool enough to know what the modern equivalent is. “Bruh!” drives me mad because its meaning depends entirely on context. But I do rather like the self congratulatory “Slay!” as in getting something just right but in style.
The problem would appear that they have a reduced sense of where such language is appropriate, i.e. best left out of professional file notes…
I’m too young to have seen it on its first outing, but Wild Angels indicates that nothing really changes: “We wanna be free… We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. And we wanna get loaded. And we wanna have a good time. And that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna have a good time. We’re gonna have a party!”
Each generation supplants those that came before.
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