Buyers: where do estate agents find them?
Having recently set up this business from scratch it is has been interesting to note the reaction of people when they find, upon looking at your website, that you only have one property listed. The immediate reaction seems to be – “why would somebody choose to sell their property through you when you only have one property listed and therefore can only have a handful of prospective buyers or applicants?” The question is an interesting one and is, perhaps, based upon an outdated understanding of how buying and selling property now works.
Before the internet became a significant factor in commerce of all types a person wishing to buy a property would need to research those estate agents that operated in the areas in which he or she was interested. This could be done by looking up agents in publications such as the Yellow Pages, telephoning them and/or visiting their offices. At this point the prospective buyer would register with some or all of the agents – perhaps choosing only to register with those that had a reputation for selling properties of the kind for which the buyer was looking. So, in the context of the local market, a person looking for a Georgian town house on Camberwell Grove, for example, might historically have looked at all of the local agents and registered with the one or two that had a track record for securing such top end properties. The prospective buyer would then have been provided, by those agents, with details of any suitable available properties and kept up to date by telephone or post with any new properties that happened to come onto the market. The flip side of this was that those agents began to have not only a reputation for having top end properties for sale (unlike many of their competitors) but also a reputation for having lots of registered applicants that were looking for top end properties. As a result people wishing to sell top end properties would list them with those agents and their reputation became self perpetuating. In that era, when agents were reliant on attracting potential buyers to come to them based upon their existing stock, it would be legitimate to query whether an agent that only had one listing could possibly have enough applicants to tempt other sellers to instruct that agent on their properties.
The current market operates differently. It is estimated that as many as 95 per cent of searches for new homes now begin online. Individual estate agencies now all have their own websites. The internet allows you to locate those agencies much more easily than looking in the Yellow Pages. What is more, you do not need to make an actual visit to the agent – you can make a virtual visit to them online and have a snoop around to see the properties they currently have for sale. You may register with them – outlining your requirements and asking about specific properties. However, over and above all of that, you will no doubt have a look on a different kind of site – a property portal such as Rightmove or Zoopla. These sites allow you to forget about individual agents. All you have to do is specify what you are looking for in terms of price, size, location, etc. and, as if by magic, you are provided with a list of properties that meet your criteria – irrespective of the estate agent that is selling them. The magic incidentally is principally due to the fact that almost every UK estate agency maintains expensive accounts with one or both of these portals.
For an estate agent therefore the key to finding buyers is to have an account with these property portals and to list properties accurately and appealingly on them. Even if you have never listed a property for sale before, once you do so on these sites you obtain access to the vast majority of serious potential purchasers looking for properties like the one you are listing . In today’s world an estate agent’s track record and history is, for the purposes of accessing the universe of potential buyers, irrelevant.
