Do online agents pose a real threat to traditional high street agents? | News | Property Reporter

Do online agents pose a real threat to traditional high street agents? | News | Property Reporter

The explosion of online agents over the last three years appears to be posing a threat to the established high street agents, in a market where commissions are being driven down and vendors are questioning how agents can justify their high fees
Over 90 per cent of house sale enquiries now come via the internet and more and more consumers are seeing the benefits of online agents as their fees are a fraction of the cost of their high street counterparts.

Some high street agents are differentiating themselves to win business by talking about their excellent reputation locally and superior levels of customer service. However many agents only have this opportunity to differentiate themselves when they get called in on the valuation. If the vendor has not formed the right impression of the agent before the valuation, they will inevitably challenge them on price. After all, vendors can hardly be blamed for opting for a cheaper service that ‘looks’ like it will do the same job. Therefore the task of agents is to make sure that they look and sound like they do a different job.

Mark Burgess, Managing Director of Iceberg Digital comments:

“It is easy to think that the solution is to move to a serviced office and offer to sell people’s homes for next to nothing. When it comes to cost alone, it’s clearly cheaper for vendors to use an online estate agent who are charging as little as £499, but this doesn’t mean that the majority will want to go down this route. .....