e-valuations.co.uk - Blog

People on both sides of a property transaction can benefit by being more informed about property values but, whoever possesses more information is likely to have the upper hand.

If you are are selling your house and you have received an offer which is lower than you expected, it is very easy to turn it down and move on. What if you had a independent report which calculated the value of your property by presenting factual market data which you could then quickly email to the person who made the offer?

It is a simple step that could take just a minute or two, but it could get you a few thousand pounds if the purchaser takes the gesture as a genuine counteroffer. It is difficult for anyone to disagree with a well organised, and well presented 15 page property report and the buyer should recognize that you have done your research before you set the asking price.

Conversely, if you are attempting to purchase a property and you feel as though the seller has overpriced the house, you may be able to persuade them to accept a lower offer if you present your offer along with a detailed market analysis. Even though the seller may still disagree with you about some of the nuances contained within the report, at least it has started a dialogue, whereas a verbal low offer may just be rejected in the first instance. Now that a dialogue has started, it has the chance to eventually lead to securing the deal because of the rational approach that you employed in your negotiations.

If you are interested in obtaining independent market analysis for you situation, have a look at the Free sample reports at www.e-valuations.co.uk

The money spent on an online property valuation can easily be recovered by simply providing the report to the other party along with your counter offer.

Good luck with your negotiations!

Negotiation Image courtesy of sheeshoo’s Flickr Photo stream

Using Google’s helpful trend analysis tool, it is easy to spot the point in time when the property portal Rightmove had achieved the critical mass to push past the number of searches performed for “Estate Agent”. This is a good example of the shift in the collective mentality of house buyers from thinking about a specific Estate Agent, but rather thinking about the clearinghouse of properties that a portal can provide.

UK vs. USA

The UK property market has not evolved with the benefit (or is it detriment?) of local multiple listing services (MLSs). In the 1960’s the Real Estate agents in the USA began to split their sales commissions for each transaction and the buyers agent would be compensated with 3% of the sales price and the sellers agent would also be compensated with 3% of the sales price.

The split commission structure encouraged an open exchange of listing information between all of the agents and soon MLSs began to start in local areas as a way to manage the transfer of information. Before everyone had a PC, the MLSs published books for agents to subscribe to. The books would come once a week or at regular intervals. Once PCs became mainstream, and the MLSs published the information electronically and each agent would subscribe to access the listings database. There are currently over 900 local MLSs in the USA.

National MLS

Back to my point about Rightmove. It is easy to draw a parallel to Rightmove as a national MLS for the UK. The market share is not quite 100% but it does dominate the competition. The interesting thing about the Rightmove property portal model is that it has achieved its success through the traffic was driven by the public’s demand for the information, whereas the local MLS’s in the USA were set up by Real Estate Agents to benefit Real Estate Agents and are for the most part closed to consumers.

The consumer driven model in the UK is a superior system for publishing property information and it is unfortunate that the majority of the MLSs in the USA have been refusing to open there listing to the public. Some are slowly beginning to adapt and allow public access, but the rest should hurry because the large brokers are now starting to push their listing towards Trulia and other “portal-ish” websites.

Now only if Estate Agents in the UK began to split their commissions and share their listings with competing agents, they would have the most efficient real estate system in the world,…. but that is an entirely different post

At e-valuations we are always looking for properties for sale. Not to buy, but to use as comparables. We have been doing this for a few years now and and we have seen many quick and easy property search sites launch which incorporate click and drag mapping capabilities. The best examples of this technology include extate.co.uk, nestoria.co.uk, ononemap.com, & zoomf.com.

Notice that I did not even call it a new technology? Google, Microsoft & Yahoo all have developed their own mapping service application and they each have allowed anyone to tap into the mapping capabilities and build applications on top of their basic service. Some of these services have been available for more than 2 years already.

Property, as we have been told, is all about Location, Location, Location (Thanks Kirstie) Placing a property within the context of location is fundamental an it is best to use a map. The websites that I mentioned above have all embraced this and built their services around the ability to place multiple properties on one map.

Why has Rightmove decided not to incorporate this element into their service? They have historically provided a link to a map on the listing page of each property and recently they have even switched from a static streetmap to a dragable Microsoft map, but that does not provide a very useful service because you cannot compare many properties at the same time.

Rightmove is an extremely successful company with many great features and an enormous inventory of properties. They are missing an opportunity and they need to focus on innovation before they start to lose market share.

Overview

The population of the UK is estimated at 60,000,000 people with an area slightly smaller than the area of Oregon. Greater London is estimated to be around 7,500,000 people.

Estate Agents

The number of Estate Agents offices in England is estimated to be around 11,000. Each office tends to employ between 1 and 5 sales agents which are likely to be paid on a part salary and a part commission basis. The average office has about 50 active property listings at a time. The top ten estate agency chains own 27 per cent of the estimated total estate agency offices in the country. In addition to the larger estate agency chains, there are many small independent estate agents who operate in local areas and own only a few offices or a single estate agency office. A growing trend is for smaller estate agents, while remaining independent, to belong to affinity groups with other independent estate agents. This enables their properties to be marketed not only through their own offices but also through those of the other group members. The top 8 affinity groups make up 37 per cent of estimated total estate agency branches in the country. The remaining 36 per cent of the market is composed of completely independent Agent offices.