As long as there have been houses, there have always been estate agents.
And as housing stock has grown and property markets have become more and more speculative, the number of estate agents has grown, too. At last count, even though almost a tenth of them shut down during 2008/9, we’re still left with around ten thousand High Street estate agency offices up and down the country.
In recent times the ease and the coverage of the internet has created a new breed of property firm … internet estate agents or, as they are also known, online estate agents.
Two years can be a long time on the internet. It’s only taken that long, though, for the more well-known, established internet agents like eMoov.co.uk to find themselves being crowded out of the online house selling market by a growing number of new startups flocking to join them on a computer screen near you.
There’s nothing wrong with competition – that’s why they came up with the idea of low cost online estate agents in the first place. After all, someone had to break the stranglehold of high fees and sole agency tie-ins High Street firms had been holding over Mr and Mrs Property Vendor for so long.
Buyer beware, though. For every legal, decent, honest and truthful online estate agent, there could be many more, much less scrupulous opportunists waiting for their virtual prey.
Anyone – but anyone – can launch themselves as an online estate agency: there are no qualifications required whatsoever to set oneself up as an estate agent, both online and off. All you need is a readymade website, a few stock photos, a bit of text and – voila! – you are now an online estate agency. Just like that.
Online estate agencies should be approached with the same care as when selecting a conventional, albeit expensive, property agent. Are they well established? Are they members of the Property Ombudsman Scheme? Are their staff and directors actually experienced property people or have they just migrated from selling replacements windows, life insurance or time share? Look for their membership of the Federation of Small Businesses and the important e-Homebuying Forum.
And when it comes to testimonials, there’s nothing stopping a bored virtual estate agent from using a little poetic license on the office computer on a slow afternoon. So asking to see the originals is always a good idea.
From March 1st 2011 the Advertising Standards Authority has jurisdiction over misleading or false claims made within the content of UK websites. This means that if sales statements are not honest and accurate the ASA can act to impose various sanctions on the offending site owners.
And with any luck, we won’t have to put up with those web-page exaggerations concocted purely as a means to persuade us to part with our money. Exaggerations, for example, like that Southend on Sea website – with only 13 properties listed on it – claiming to be the ‘UK’s leading on line estate agent, which had ’saved three individual home sellers over 9,000 in fees between them in just one day.’ There’s nothing like a good success story, is there?
A real, genuine online estate agent’s remit is to visit your property to photograph it, take measurements and create a floor plan. They’ll vet potential buyers and arrange viewings for suitable prospects. There’s also the matter of negotiation and overseeing the entire transaction to make sure it all goes smoothly. And let’s not forget in-house mortgage brokering and advice about conveyancing. But some outfits, passing themselves off as online estate agents aren’t much more than private house sales websites. They charge very little, but then again, they do very little worth charging for. Some might not even give you feedback on viewing appointments.
So by all means sit down at your computer and go down the online home sale route, because you’ll be saving yourself a fortune … as long as you choose an established, regulated, bona-fide internet estate agent – not a virtual cowboy outfit.
eMoov makes it simple for you to sell house on the internet. You can sell your home quickly and with the benefit of cheap estate agents fees. All properties are displayed at UK’s leading 25 property websites including Rightmove and Prime Location, reaching 170 million buyer visitors each month. Plus as online estate agents, their low priced service reaches millions of people 24/7.