Two-thirds of sellers do not visit a high street office before instructing an agent

Two-thirds of sellers do not visit a high street agent’s office before putting their property on the market.

The statistic is almost exactly the same for landlords – only 37% visit a letting agent’s branch before instruction.

The figures are meaningful because they are drawn from the Property Academy’s tenth annual Home Moving Trends and Landlord & Tenant surveys, which have had over 15,000 responses from customers of agents across the country.

Academy founder Peter Knight said: “This doesn’t necessarily make your office redundant but it does beg the question – are you getting as much from it as you could?”

He said agents could copy an idea from Australia where, after the agent has been to someone’s home, they set up a post-appraisal meeting to discuss marketing.

The surveys, now in their tenth year, have also shown that 25% of vendors are selling for the first time, while one in four vendors reported problems with their chains.

Encouragingly, 68% of all respondents rated their estate agent as excellent or good at progressing the sale, although 15% rated them poor or very poor.

The full results will be delivered at Knight’s forthcoming new EA Masters event on September 22, where the Best Estate Agent Guide will be launched.

Standard tickets, which include the conference and black tie dinner, are £299 plus VAT, and VIP tickets are £349 plus VAT.

The EA Masters event is only available to agents with at least one branch listed in the Best Estate Agent Guide. Agents can check for inclusion before applying for tickets.

However, there is controversy over the potential costs to agents – see next story.

 http://www.eamasters.co.uk/tickets/

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4 Comments

  1. Chris Wood

    Whilst a vital part of every agents armoury, given the fact that around 95% of the public still go on to choose agents with a high street presence it rather demonstrates that the public recognise that all agents are, in fact, ‘online’ and the public value other factors more highly than a mere digital presence and recognise the misnomer for what it is.

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  2. surrey1

    Who seriously pays £360 for dinner in a hotel? Either Rightmove or Diane Abbott have come up with that one.

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  3. Woodentop

    He said agents could copy an idea from Australia where, after the agent has been to someone’s home, they set up a post-appraisal meeting to discuss marketing.

     

    Sorry you mean copy my idea and that of other switched on agents who have done this  for decades. You mean to tell me agents don’t know why they didn’t get the instruction or care (the latter is common!).

     

    This story begs the question, if they didn’t visit the agent how did they know who to contact for the appraisal? Was it from brand awareness of more traditional methods like word of mouth (recommendations), boards, web sites, local radio, sponsorships, etc or just possibly newspapers! What this story doesn’t tell is, what was it that made the customer contact the agent? This is more meaningful, not a dinner party.

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    1. Property Paddy

      Yeah, but what’s not to like? Bit of grub, bit of bubbley and you never know, late in the evening, !!!!!
      i wont be attending
       

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