online agents
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Guest Blogs
Upad boss: traditional letting agents will soon go the way of Yellow Pages
Not only has our food, cars, insurance, retail shopping, and just about anything else you can think of been propelled forward into a technology-driven world. And so too has property. As companies like Amazon and Uber dominating their markets, so they are transforming the way customers buy goods and services. And now there’s proptech, the coined phrase for the collision of the property and technology worlds. This means landlords can no longer rely on outdated methods of finding people to rent their homes. Tenants, particularly those under 30 years old who are the largest demographic in the market, are searching online for their next home, not in agent’s shop windows. This shift not only paves the way for online agents like Upad it also means landlords need to become technology-savvy and up their game. Much as the Yellow Pages is a thing of the past, so traditional lettings services will soon be too as landlords turn to more manageable and cost-effective solutions for promoting their rental properties. Our research shows 92% of tenants go online to search for their next rental home and 91% said good photos where their number one concern. In a technology driven world, we want information…
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Features
Will all agents be hybrid soon?
How far will you go down the digital route to hybrid estate agency? Andrea Kirkby’s research indicates seismic change is coming.
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Features
High street gloom
Two brave figures in the residential sales industry predict that the traditional high street estate agency could disappear in the next five to ten years.
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Latest property news
Top high street firms outperform online agents, research shows
The top-performing high street agents in the UK outperform online agents in all areas including achieved asking price and time taken to sell, it has been revealed. Research by consumer advice website HomeOwnersAlliance.com found that the top 1,000 best performing agents achieved on average 100.35% of their asking price, “suggesting that sellers can still maximise their home’s potential by selecting the correct local agents”. These agents also have a much better sales success rate than online agents, the research reveals, and sell 82.42% of homes listed with them compared to 51.98% by online and hybrid agents. “Sellers who look carefully at their local market before listing their home for sale will probably still be better off instructing the best high street agent in their area,” says Paula Higgins, Chief Executive of the HomeOwners Alliance. But for those looking for a quick, easy sale with surprisingly high rewards, online agents are an excellent and rapidly-improving option.” But the performance of online agents versus the whole high street market compares less favourably for traditional agents. Asking price The research reveals that online agents achieve a higher percentage of the asking price than their high street competitors despite charging on average £850 in…
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Resources
A rocky year ahead for online agents
Online agents had a great ride in the last year, says Adam Walker, but he is pretty certain that this particular roller coaster could have a rockier time in 2017. Why?
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Latest property news
eMoov removes claim after latest complaint to ASA
Online agent eMoov has altered an information panel on its website that claimed vendors were 34% more likely to sell with the company than traditional agents, and that it was the “leading digital estate agent”. This follows a complaint from a member of the public to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) last week. The complainant believed the claims made on eMoov’s site could not be substantiated and asked the Advertising Standards Authority to investigate. The ASA contacted eMoov, which agreed to remove the first claim and amend the second to read that it was ‘the best rated estate agent’ (although it now says ‘favourite’, see below) after eMoov provided evidence to the ASA that it had received an award to that effect from allAgents.co.uk. The case was then closed by the ASA without further action. Claims made on eMoov’s are becoming familiar fare for the adjudicators at the ASA. In September last year someone complained about the accuracy of its fee comparison tool, while during June it was asked to take down an advert that claimed the company ‘sold in 98%’ of UK postcodes’, while in June 2015 a similar complaint pointed out a claim that it “achieves 99%…
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Latest property news
It’s just hearsay…online agent claims celebrity client
Most estate and letting agents have a celebrity client story to tell. It might be an A-lister viewing a city pad or country pile, a downsizing ageing rock star or a recently-enriched boyband member on the hunt for a party pad. It’s not always plain sailing, though. Last year Rowan Atkinson at first listed his Cotswolds home with agent Carter Jonas and then, after a buyer wasn’t forthcoming, decided to switch agent and try Strutt & Parker. But for online-only letting agent Upad their celebrity moment came recently when former Hear’Say member Noel Sullivan decided to log on, much to the surprise of its staff. The singer and more recently TV actor, who was brought up in Cardiff and initially trained as an opera singer, is now a client. He’s currently on tour with the musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and also has a new album out, Here I Go Again, and has just landed a TV role in BBC drama Ordinary Lies. Sullivan has been renting out his one-bedroom apartment in SW London for some time and recently switched from a traditional local agent to Upad, and now appears to be an enthusiastic convert to the online model. He cites “astronomical…
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Features
Rise of the machines
Could the internet estate agent model really terminate the high street agent? Joanne Christie reports.
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Latest property news
Online agent pumps up its offering with new features
‘Where’s What’ can even pinpoint the nearest postbox to a property…
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Associations & Bodies
Question time
Have you ever wanted to collar the industry’s leaders and get stuck into a decent debate about the challenges and future of the industry? Nigel Lewis puts them to the test.
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