Estate agents must go hybrid – or go hungry.
The advice is aimed both at high street and online agents.
It comes from an industry supplier of services such as floor plans and EPCs.
Amanda Lindsay, commercial director of a firm called Virtual360, said: “In this digital age, businesses have no need to invest in expensive infrastructure, costly premises and a full team of employees.
“Start-ups are lean, and business growth is unlimited in almost every industry.
“For example Skype, the world’s largest communications company, owns no telephone line infrastructure, and eBay, one of the biggest online stores, holds no stock.
The UK Estate Agency industry is the next group of businesses to be disrupted by virtual trading.”
However, she said that customers have not yet made the switch to online agents.
She said customers still need the support of a local estate agent, and that online agents have so far only been able to provide a limited service.
Lindsay said: “The only way estate agencies can truly thrive is to offer a hybrid service of online tracking and management with a touch of the personal local service to support the sale.
“Online agencies need to look at enhancing their service offerings to match what the high street agencies can provide.
“They need a team of photographers, valuers, viewing assistants and listers on the ground, visiting the properties and meeting customers.
“High street agents should offer an online booking and progress tracking service too, to keep up with the times, but also look to grow beyond their local area by outsourcing core services to a team with national contacts, the right technology, with quick turnaround times and at an affordable price.”
Comments (9)
Traditionalist. It would be advertorial if they were paying for it. They aren’t and they can’t. EYE never accepts advertorials.
Strewth Ros must we have this continual diatribe of thinly disguised advertorials, offering words of wisdom. Amusing though, they quickly get put into their place by agents working in the real market place.
Dear Amanda, go and work IN an estate agents for a couple of months and then come back with your recommendations.
PP spot on, I was thinking just the same, where has she been living. However her comments are very true about web portals only business’s which is what we have all been saying provides a poorer service.
Wouldn’t last a week. Couldn’t hack the first challenging encounter with one of those… what do you call them again…
…oh, yeah – members of the public.
Best leave her where she’s comfortable – in the cloud.
It is the model we’ve been running for 2 years now – although interestingly as our franchise partners expand their businesses, more and more of them are opening traditional offices. Not to welcome the queues of customers.. But because when they take on staff, they need somewhere to work from.
But we advise against expensive town centre shop fronts. We suggest on a busy ring road, with great shop front visibility and parking are key.
Giving the single percentage figure of people who find their home via a branch, the shop front is now little more than a advertising hoarding.
The cost of an office, rent, rates, staff, IT, phone, cleaning etc etc. You can do a lot of damage with that money in marketing spend. And normally in business, it’s the business that can spend the most on marketing that generally wins the business.
Ebay is an exchange between buyers and sellers. Skype is a communications exchange hub.
Best evolution in big data, property and agents via a hub is a national mls idx sharing hub that retains control with agents.
Industries such as holidays. Mortgages. Insurance etc all work via Co brokerage. All that’s stopping this mass interoperability is the UK schema that main portals carriage data one way. Idx allows multi directional flow as in the USA.
“They need a team of photographers, valuers, viewing assistants and listers on the ground, visiting the properties and meeting customers.” – So like being a high street agent then..?
High street agents should offer an online booking and progress tracking service too (it’s called our website), to keep up with the times, but also look to grow beyond their local area by outsourcing core services to a team with national contacts, the right technology (it’s called a portal).
“at an affordable price” – you get what you pay for.
err like Lindsay’s company……