High street agents have almost no incentive to get their sellers a better price, online agent Russell Quirk has claimed.

He said negotiators achieving an extra £10,000 on the asking price receive a negligible £10 after tax –and may have very little interest in doing the work.

Quirk was speaking after claims by eMoov to get sellers virtually all of their asking price appeared here in the Telegraph at the weekend.

The story, which appeared under the headline, ‘I went online and saved £6,500’, featured a comparison exercise that also named Foxtons and north London independent Jeremy Leaf.

In the piece, Quirk claims to have sold properties for 99% of the asking price compared with the Hometrack average of 96%.

He also said that eMoov shifts homes faster at 20 days instead of the 65-day average quoted by Rightmove.

Eye asked him if he could prove these claims –and he insisted that he could.

He said: “Yes, we can prove it.

“We constantly monitor the percentage of asking price that we achieve across the UK and compare it to the Hometrack research that they publish quarterly. It’s the price achieved versus the asking price at the time of the sale– the same as the Hometrack stats methodology.

“Simply, we’re consistently 3% ahead of the national average as assessed by Hometrack.

“I appreciate that this won’t sit comfortably with the ‘You have to pay a high fee to ensure good performance’ brigade, but it’s a fact.

“There will also be high street agents out there that outperform the average, I’m sure.

“The point from eMoov’s point of view is that there is now evidence that a seller is, at the very least, no worse off in price achieved when using an online agent as measured against the national average using a good sample size, so the data is therefore statically relevant.”

Quirk went on: “Coincidentally, I recorded a Radio 4 piece with Evan Davis last week in which I, as part of a panel, debated the merits of pricing and related incentives.

“My view as I articulated on the programme (the Bottom Line, scheduled for January broadcast) is that markets decide price, not agents, and there is no evidence that an ‘incentive’ by way of a higher on-completion fee means a higher price achieved.

“In fact the opposite may be true.

“Firstly, the buyer and the seller are the parties that control the transaction and are incredibly well informed these days as to ‘correct’pricing due to the availability of comparables published.

“The other (in my view far less important) participant in a sale negotiation is the estate agency negotiator, and even if one believes that he/she is pivotal to price achieved, it’s worth fleshing out some practical likelihoods.

“A £10,000 difference in price achieved is worth, typically, £150 to the estate agency company in fee.

“A negotiator staff member may be paid 10% of that. So, £15. Less PAYE and NI means that the neg earns a tenner for (allegedly) working harder to get a higher price.

“I contend that he/she has little if any influence these days because of how well informed buyer and seller are, thanks to internet resources.”

Eye also asked Quirk about eMoov’s fall-through rates, normally put at somewhere around one in three.

He told us: “The last proper stats I saw for the UK as a whole amongst all agents were a few months ago from a leading national online conveyancer showing 27% across 35,000 cases.

“Our fall-through rate is 14.8% from September 1 to today. So, about half that of the average agent.

“Why? Because our sellers have already financially committed to selling by paying upfront, they are more serious sellers. And because we’re ****** good estate agents…”

*  Tonight, the Sarah Beeny C4 programme, How to sell your home, returns after last week’s scheduled break, looking at online estate agents.