So, what did you make of the first Sarah Beeny television programme last night, featuring home sellers bypassing high street agents?

In the first two case studies – a three-bed cottage in Sussex and a four-bed Victorian semi in Nottingham – one of the sellers said they had exchanged contracts after signing up with an unnamed online agents six months ago.

The other was persevering, despite what looked like only two viewings.

In both cases, the online agents did not seem to have queried the sellers’ own valuations of their properties.

In East Sussex, the local high street agent thought it should have been put on the market at £300,000 – some £100,000 less than the seller thought it was worth.

Needless to say, the property has still not sold. But the vendor is sticking to her guns as to how much she thinks her home is worth (an all too familiar scenario, no doubt, to many agents). And she is now trying the ‘traditional’ agent route.

In the Nottingham case study, the domestic tensions practically crackled, with her accusing him of being only too ready to reduce the price, and him saying what a load of hassle all those viewings were.

There were some interesting points.

First, those Beeny figures: 1m homes sold each year results in £5bn a year in estate agent fees.

For those who can do the maths, does that ring true to you? Eye’s own number cruncher queries the sum: if a million properties a year sold at an average of £160,000 each, that would fetch a total of £160bn. With an average estate agent’s fee of 1.25%, that would work out at a total of £2bn in fees. So, we’re not sure where the £5bn came from.

The prices were also interesting. The Sussex property last sold for £132,500 in 1997. Despite improvements the vendor had made, the outer paintwork was peeling. Could it really have been worth any more than the £300,000 the local agent was saying?

In Nottingham, the vendors had bought the property for £236,000 in 2011. Sold privately – and one presumes for the listing price of £220,000 – the high street agent had valued it at £210,000.

The Nottingham sellers claimed to have saved £3,276 in agents’ fees.

Point proven? Maybe. But only maybe, because we did not see the high street agent instructed or what they could have achieved.

The single most mystifying point was the programme’s comparisons between properties of similar prices but of entirely different house types and in different parts of the country. So, no real comparables at all.