time to rethink your proposition?

Agents need to think again about what they’re known for, in this PurpleBricks era.

Back in July, while house-hunting, I posted this blog about how an agent was somewhat deficient in adding value to my shortlisting and viewing process.

Since then I am happy to report that we have found, bought and moved in to a house, thanks to another agent, the brilliant Clive Pearce Property of Truro (happily, also a client of ours!).

I say ‘brilliant’ because the value they added to our house-hunting process was not so much at the marketing / viewing stage (in fact we did our own photos and viewings, because I’m like that!) but because of how hard they worked AFTER the offer.

Long story short; getting the chain of four properties to agree on a completion date was troublesome to say the least, including a change of date by our vendor immediately before exchange.

Our solicitor was not interested in any part of the chain other than our own sale, and seemed woefully disinterested in talking to any of the other solicitors in the chain.

It was only the hard work by our agent that kept it all together, diligently phoning every part of the chain, all relevant solicitors and even phoning round removal companies when the sudden change of completion date appeared, to be sure that our vendor could physically move on that date!

And here’s the point. Most agents’ marketing talks about the websites they advertise on, how ‘passionate’ (ugh…) they are about property, how many years of ‘combined experience’ their directors have and blah-de-bloody-blah.

But in my view, the real value a good agent has in the process is not in the marketing and photography (many sellers do this pretty well themselves, quite frankly) but in the period AFTER the offer, keeping the whole chain together.

By contrast, anecdotal evidence tells me, many of the for-sale-by-owner websites do this pretty badly (why would they do it well when they’ve already made their money before the marketing has even started?) and few consumers would be willing to phone up and down a chain to make sure it stays intact.

The canny estate agents, therefore, should really be shouting about the strength of their post-sale processes rather than how good their advertising is.