A recent Daily Mail (Friday 5th March) article highlighted the changes that are taking place in the way people buy and sell property in the UK. It found that estate agents were now under pressure as a growing trend for selling homes online threatened the industry.
It’s now a fact that the majority of buyers will use the internet to find a property for sale however only a small percentage of people in the UK use the internet to sell property. A recent OFT report found that about 2 per cent of UK homeowners sold their properties online. It also found that 27 per cent of sellers who have used traditional estate agents stated they would consider using an alternative method to sell thier homes. The report also called for greater choice for consumers in the way people could sell a property in the UK.
In the article Peter Bolton King chief executive of the National Association of Estate Agents said “Only agents know exactly what a property in a certain street is worth and what’s in demand”
Nick Marr director at The Little House Company “Estate agent valuations are an opinion and will vary from agent to agent. Most agents do have good local housing market knowledge however some unscrupulous agents may over value to win an instruction. Automated Valuation Models can help calculate property valuations as they use a statistical model which computes large amounts of property data to estimate the market value for an individual property”
Rightmove provide estate agents with AVMs and we like other for sale by owner sites provide private sellers with the option to use similar online property valuations. A confidence level is produced along with the valuation to indicate how accurate the valuation is.”
No Commission and no commitment to an estate agent’s contract are the biggest incentives for DIY house sales. Property expert ‘, Sarah Beeny ‘Estate agents have had the monopoly for too long, which never benefits the customer,’ says Beeny, whose tepilo.com is free for listings and charges no commission fee”.
