agency fees
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Rental market
Agents slam big city council for undercutting letting agencies
Jeremy Clarke of Belvoir joins fellow agents in attacking City of York's letting agency arm for offering lower fees and cash incentives to landlords.
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Mentoring
The structural deficit in agency
This month Nathan Emerson wonders why, if everything is going so well, is it all getting harder?
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Mentoring
You’ve never had it so good…
But is it a ‘false dawn’? Nathan Emerson reminds us all that the good times don’t last and you need to plan ahead.
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Latest property news
Stamp duty holiday generates £2.7bn in agency fees
Research from WiggyWam shows that UK estate agents have generated an estimated £2.7 billion in agency fees since the introduction of the Stamp Duty holiday.
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Latest property news
Home owners paying £250m a month in estate agency fees
Land Registry figures show that the price of the average property sold in England and Wales in January 2016 was £190,658. High street estate agents typically charge sellers a 1.8 per cent commission fee, meaning, says the ‘hybrid’ agency YOPA, that they made an average £3,431 in fees for every sale. A total of 77,170 properties sold that month, for a combined value of £20.7bn, which equates to more than £250m paid out to high street agencies, which control around 95 per cent of the residential market. That is almost five times the amount they were paying 20 years ago when the average property sold for £59,278, netting estate agencies an estimated average commission of £1,067. Property sales totaled £3.1b in January 1996, according to Land Registry figures, which equates to £56.9m in fees to estate agents. The trend is most pronounced in London and the South East where property prices have risen most in the last two decades. In London, the average property now sells for more than £500,000, handing estate agents almost £10,000 in commission per transaction. Detached properties in the capital sell at an average £929,680, equating to an average commission of more than £16,000. In the…
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Features
Multi-agency fees and fairness
This case study concerns a dispute referred to The Property Ombudsman (TPO) from a seller complainant concerned about the fee that the agent (Agent 1) charged upon the sale of the property. The complainant explained that Agent 1 charged a multi-agency fee, as the property had been marketed by another agent (Agent 2). The complainant stated that Agent 2 was not instructed market the property for sale, and had confirmed that any marketing carried out by them was in error. The complainant also alleged that Agent 1 gave no prior indication of their intention to charge a multi-agency fee and did not advise that Agent 2 also appeared to be marketing the property. Agent 1’s response was that the property was marketed by Agent 2 throughout the period in which they were instructed, and that, as per the terms of their Agency Agreement, a multi-agency rate commission fee was payable. The facts I began by explaining that no complaint had been brought against Agent 2, and therefore I was unable to consider their actions. For clarity, I understood that Agent 2 had been informally instructed in the sale of the property by the complainant’s parents in 2012. The parents at…
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