Estate agents’ fees, which vary enormously, are among the biggest bugbears for vendors, given that they add thousands of pounds to the cost of selling a home, new research by Strike claims.
Homeowners’ biggest moans when moving house include having to wait for the Wi-Fi to be installed, waiting on a move-in date – and paying estate agents. The findings are unsurprising given that Strike, which commissioned the study, is keen to promote its ‘sell your home for free proposition’.
The survey of 2,000 adults, who have gone through the task of moving, found 60% found the experience “stressful”, while 40% were frustrated as many aspects were out of their control.
Almost half of those surveyed experienced unexpected costs when they moved, and of these, nearly a quarter were taken aback by estate agent fees, with sellers required to pay an estimated £2,800 for estate agent fees on average, according to the research, which will undoubtedly annoy other agents.
Sam Mitchell, chief executive officer at Strike, commented: “Moving house can be an expensive and stressful process, and unfortunately far too many sellers feel ripped off.
“They should be able to put their hard-earned cash into their new home, rather than wasting them on high fees.
“Being able to remove the estate agent fees from the process gives the power back to the customer to put their money towards the things which really matter – and we’re here for anyone selling who wants a stress-free experience that puts them in control.”
Some 38% of respondents felt estate agency fees were unjustified, with a third happy to cut the estate agent out of the process altogether if possible.
In fact, estate agent fees ranked highly on a list of life’s biggest rip-offs according to Strike – just behind the likes of hospital parking and snacks at the cinema.
Mitchell added: “Moving into a new property should be a memorable milestone – but it seems far too many people have a negative experience, with wasted fees often the cause of their stress and unhappiness.”
Comments (28)
‘Strike’ meaning in the dictionary is quite fitting, as that’s exactly what they’ll do when they have your money:
strike verb (STOP WORK)
[
to refuse to continue working because of an argument with an employer about working conditions, pay levels, or joblosses:
Strike should have invested its investors cash in property. As the amount of cash Strike has burnt through, they could have bought a 14,500 sq foot mansion in Mayfair, presently listed online at £54.5M. At least they would have seen a return. And maybe someone should have a word with the genuis who dreamed the new company name up – after all as a verb Strike means to ’cause a person or place to suffer severley from the effects of something’ according to the Oxford Dictionary) Which in this case is the investors bank balances…
Well there’s a surprise. A ‘no commission’ cowboy outfit instigate a survey with (no doubt) loaded questions that says home owners don’t like paying fees. Who does? The point is what sort of service do those sellers expect when it comes to best price, feedback, unbiased referrals etc etc? Not the sort of service they’ll get from an outfit with no incentive to provide one. Just like PB this cheap & nasty nonsense has been around since the seventies & not one has lasted more than 5 years tops. It’s an old but still very true cliche, ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’!
God only knows how ‘sellers will feel’ after appointing strike it lucky and their conveyancing partners to look after their most valuable asset….stressed out, regretful, angry, and duped to name a few I expect. I’m actually all up for people finding different ways to operate in our business, but surely the one thing we can all agree on is that it cannot be done well for free?? I’m sorry but no amount of spin would convince any sensible seller otherwise, they will hoover up the fsbo market, spend themselves out, and disappear.
Same drivel PB have been spouting for 8 or so years. What’s it doing on this site?. Strike aren’t Estate Agents just data collectors and traders.
Purplebricks made an enemy of our industry with this rhetoric- years later, it’s sad to see Strike have learned nothing in this regard. Strike’s national rollout and huge advertising campaign will massively accelerate their losses. Eventually, investors will need a viable pivot in business model to stop the haemorrhaging of cash, as we saw with PB, which dilutes their offering and goes against their early bold rhetoric. EBITDA is quickly establishing itself as the ’emperors clothes’ method of profitability- and Strike cannot escape this. It’s unfortunate to see Sam steer the company in this direction- but the annual company filings will tell everyone everything they need to know- accounts filed at the start of Jan show nearly £55m losses- this figure will seem like pocket money in tears to come!
OKAY…
There was another “article” printed last week about this lot, in The Times. Funnily enough it didn’t get a mention here on EYE but did elsewhere.
Within the PR Puffery it said
…Strike makes around half to two thirds of its revenues from the potential buyers: each house typically is viewed by ten to eleven of them. “All of those people are prospective customers for any services that are to do with house-moving, be that conveyancing, mortgage advice or surveys, removals, electricity, broadband. We’ve got relationships with gyms, online supermarkets.”
To which I then posted on Tw@tter
Anyone thinking of using @we_are_strike to market their property should read this VERY carefully before making a decision.
They may have more to gain selling your potential viewer their next shopping delivery than selling them your home.
IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT FROM AN AGENT??
I won’t ask for royalties if anyone wants to borrow that argument… ;o)
The best phrase I’ve come across for something like this is: “if a service is sold ‘free’ then you are the product”
That has been my understanding of these type of “agents”. They have no particular interest in selling your home, as they make the money from solicitors, removals, mortgages and insurance etc… They are a house-moving service, not an agent! Strike put a house on the market, just round the corner from a place we were selling for a late relative. Similar area, one was a dormer bungalow, one was a house. We had two offers fall through, but still sold and completed in 3 months. The Strike one is still on the market nearly a year later…
Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
I agree with all of the above . Some potential vendors have no idea of how difficult the sales process is , and what it takes to get it over the line. They just think that we pop out , take a few pictures , and stick it on Rightmove and just sit back and wait for the offers to flood in. PB springs to mind ! Most vendors { this isn’t a criticism – just an observation } } have no idea that we have to pay a lot of money to Rightmove , Zoopla etc to market their property , together with the overheads involved in running an agency , such as telephones , staff , office rent , travel expenses , and so on . People like this Sam make my blood boil !
Breaking News 2025 – After the failure of housesimple, rebranded strike fails again after making no profits since inception. Home movers feel frustrated by failure of service after choosing them. Like baseball – 3 strikes and your out!
What are these chancers being given free publicity?
Good God, here we go again!
Haven’t we been here before with PIE and PB? Months of agent and fee bashing, masked as an article with the CEO proclaiming to be the White Knight of the property market to Vendors.
What’s next? Once a decent bank of clients has been reached, sell it of to the highest bidder and then build a business that claims to look out for the rights and interests of agents?
In other news: Turkeys “feel ripped off” by Christmas
Well the sellers probably don’t feel as ripped off as the investors in strike will feel when they realise they’ve backed a three legged horse
Considering it’s taking Solicitors months on end to complete a sale – we’re not charging enough!
Sorry but PIE is just becoming a vehicle for promoting this company and a certain inventory provider. Not news, just blatant advertising, not why I open the email each morning!
All been said. Not news.
What a load of nonsense, why do EYE give these haters of our industry any exposure?
Just like all the loss making ‘agencies’ out there that have had millions of pounds thrown at them to offer their unsustainable business models that do nothing for clients other than cost them money, I look forward to hearing that Strike need to raise yet more money to keep going.
Cumulative losses £55 million – and that’s almost year-old news!
I went to go on a rant here but two others have said exactly what I was going to say.
This is a press release copied and pasted that is now an advert. There’s no other way of looking at this.
Sorry, PIE, but may be if it’s a slow news day then it’s just a slow news day, try not to puff it out with stuff like this. You know that this has just been dragged across from the PR platforms, with no other use but to push this companies services.
Frau Renshaw would have been asking questions…
This isn’t EA news, it a blatant pitch for a new business. We survey all our sellers, fees are never the issue and we have a 99% fee satisfaction rating. We are not alone here there are many agents with 90% plus fee satisfaction. Our rating is built from over 20 years of surveys. Quite frankly I’m disappointed this was allowed to reach breaking news! Who did strike survey….. sellers who instructed Purplehicks. ♂️
I was thinking, but none of my vendors complain. We charge 1.75% and offer fantastic service. So vendors do see the value estate agents offer.
Then I noticed who commissioned the research!
Total advert, by a company failing to achieve the growth needed, staff leaving unhappy. If you can’t even give s service away, people don’t see any value.
1.75% Tycoon. That’s impressive. Anyway if 38% of sellers think fees are a rip off, why hasn’t the low fee / free sector got 38% market share? I will give you an example. Yesterday afternoon I listed a property at £395k. I called 6 buyers who missed out on one I sold close by. Within an hour I had an over asking price no chain offer. That’s what you get with a traditional agent.
“1.75% Tycoon. That’s impressive.”
On paper I would agree, Skipdale. Not that I am suggesting this to be the case – far from it – but it would not be so impressive if their average sale price was say £50,000. Or the revenue from sales was less than cost of acquisition and servicing them.
As I have always stated, percentages mean nothing when it comes to fees.
Except, that is, zero percent – when, at that level, you should not expect anything more than zero in return for your ‘investment’ in that Agent’s involvement.
Great work Skipdale. That’s why you are due a great fee. By getting an offer and moving to SSTC quicker than some online agents take to upload to the portals, how much have you saved your clients in terms of there currently mortgage payments, potential house they want to move to increasing in the current market. That’s the difference between expensive and VALUE.
To clarify over average selling price is circa £289,000. We have exceptional negotiators who are all over their chains and speak with all in those chains regularly, meaning 73% of our SSTC properties go through to Exchange and Completion. I’ve seen some low end agents achieve less than 50% completed, again that has costs attached.
Just like Skipdale we have a very active data base and call out every single property listed. Even when taking an initial call to book a valuation, our team spend 20 minutes taking to the homeowners, they often thank us for taking the time to understand what they want to achieve, and comment how other agencies just take an address, phone number, agree a date and end the call. We are already building our relationship and fee.
For one current investor existing the rental market, over the past 4 weeks we have listed 4 of their properties each Wednesday, previewed on SM and called out to other investors Evey single property, except one has been SSTC by the following Tuesday.
As an industry, we need to proud of what a great agency with well trained and motivated staff can achieve quickly. We should all be able to increase fees to 3%. Don’t just take a few photos, list on the portals and wait, that’s a 0.5% service.
So, this is basically an advert for Strike then?!
With over 300 reviews and an average of 4.9/5, it seems sellers ARE prepared to pay our fees when they get the service they expect and deserve!