Potential customers on the verge of choosing online agents are less bothered about how much it will cost them than whether their home will be sold quickly and for the asking price.
They are also not very concerned about customer service, and many – almost three-quarters – are happy to conduct their own viewings.
A survey by home-moving website Property Road, which endorses both high street and online agents, had 3,186 responses to five questions as to what visitors were looking for in an online agent, before recommending the brand best matching their answers.
It found that some 60% of home owners looking at instructing an online agent would prefer a ‘no sale, no fee’ basis, with just 20.7% preferring the upfront model.
Of the minority who prefer to pay upfront, most (65%) put the price they are willing to pay at up to £1,000. Very cheap online agents do not appear to find much favour, with just 19% saying they would only be prepared to pay up to £100.
Of those who stated they would prefer to pay on success rather than upfront, almost a third (32.1%) were willing to pay up to £2,000 for the online agent’s service.
When it comes to hosting viewings, 72.6% of respondents were happy to conduct at least some viewing themselves, with 42.7% prepared to host all viewings themselves.
But how much price and pricing options really matter to vendors is open to question – only a handful of sellers are bothered either about fees or options to pay on completion or upfront.
The final question of the survey asked respondents to choose what they would value most when choosing an estate agent.
The clear favourites were ‘the ability to achieve the asking price’ (43%) and ‘the ability to sell a property quickly’ (35%), showing that the performance of an agent is still the most important factor to sellers.
Having ‘the best customer service’ or ‘the lowest fees’ attracted 9% of responses each.
Property Road founder Paul James said: “These results are sure to raise a few eyebrows, especially since the leading online agent Purplebricks have built their entire business on the ‘pay upfront’ model.
“No doubt the findings will be music to the ears of many high street agents who have long bemoaned the approach of online agents offering lower upfront fees and a perceived ‘lesser’ service.
“What’s perhaps most surprising is that these results are based on respondents who were already considering online estate agents on our website.
“If even these sellers are preferring many of the things commonly associated with high street agents, it may help answer why the onliners haven’t gained the levels of market share that many predicted.”
The site currently rates Yopa, eSaleUK and 99Home as its top online agents.
The full survey results can be seen at
https://www.propertyroad.co.uk/homeowners-prefer-to-pay-on-completion/
Comments (11)
There are certain chain/brand name estate agents who employ staff just to promise a seller a high price, to secure their instruction, and then their contract then locks them to stay with that estate agent for 6 months, and then the price comes down and down and down, and at the end of the 6 months, if not sooner, the seller is so fed up, they take pretty much any price.
Lesson?
NEVER agree to an estate agent locking you in for more than 14 days. If they promise and are not delivering, go to a better one.
Oh dear tomorrow is the day and PB shares have fallen all day to close 5% down 93p.
No surprise by this survey …. want everything for nothing, not prepared to pay for service but only to happy to complain when it goes pear shaped.
Heartbreaking when I hear:
“My property was only on the market a week and i received the asking price” – undersold!!
OR
“I only paid £500 commssion to sell my house” – they wont be motivated to squeeze an extra £5k – £10k – £20k from a buyer!
As in life generally, go cheap, get cheap.
Hallelujah.
Going back a couple of years one Saturday I was showing the buyers around a house that was sale agreed, across the road, an arguably nicer home exactly the same size, I had valued was sold with an on-liner, they didn’t use me because my 1.5% fee was “far too high”, and “anyone one can sell a house you just need rightmove”.
I was locking up when the owner of said home sold by the on-liner, came strolling over looking all pleased with himself, coffee in hand and a smug grin, having paid his £999, telling me that he had sold his house and that he had got the full asking price of £215,000.
I congratulated the Smug Idiot and explained that we had also sold the house i was leaving at full asking price? I thought he was going to choke on his coffee, as i had valued both homes at the same level of £225,000 however this guy had dropped his price after 3 weeks because he wasn’t getting any viewings and his “local Expert” had told him to drop the price.
I was very tempted to sit and explain how much money he had lost by saving so much commission, but thought better of it. The satisfaction of driving away watching him standing there was more then enough.
Sadly this wasn’t the first or the last time this happened, but you cannot help some people.
I’d be interested to know what percentage of clients thinking of instructing a Full Service Agent place customer service as important. If you’re going for online only agents you certainly aren’t thinking customer service.
Customer service isnt important to most people until they really need it.
Sell quickly at the asking price. Lucky we have surveys. Who would have guessed.
Almost like we didn’t already know that….