The never-knowingly-underquoted online agency eMoov has renewed its attack on traditional estate agents’ fees, claiming they are as much as £922 an hour.
eMoov has made similar attacks over the past two years and its latest claim suggests that a high street estate agent’s cost per an hour has increased six per cent over the past year.
“With it taking between five and 15 hours to sell a property, high street agents could be making as much as a staggering £922 per hour. This is still despite the estate agency sector still having little barrier to entry in terms of qualifications, as well as no consistent regulatory body” says the agency’s latest release on the subject.
The agency says that with the average fee widely regarded at about 1.6 per cent including VAT on the sale of a home, agents’ take home commission is in the region of £4,608 on the sale of an average UK house.
“This is the third year we have run this research now and it’s unbelievable that high street agents are still cashing in to such an amount, [to] the detriment of UK home sellers” says eMoov founder and chief executive Russell Quirk.
“The cost per hour with an online agent is around eight times cheaper despite the service provided being consistently better, so hopefully it won't be long before the commission fee structure becomes extinct altogether" he says.
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Not withstanding the fact that this argument is illogical, it ill-becomes a respected publication such as EAT to be manipulated by this personal narrative. The more it is publicised and given exposure, the more it is perceived as fact, rather than fiction in the public eye.
Donal Trump and Hitler is/was an authority on controlling the personal narrative and if allowed to flourish unhindered, such propaganda can damage the credibility of the media in which it constantly appears.
The process of selling a home involves much more than simply uploading photos and progressing enquiries. It is incumbent on the high- Street agency sector to explain to the public what is entailed. Some do, most don't!
Without getting into the specifics of all the work required, let us assume for one second that it can actually take 15 hours to sell a home. That equates to an hourly rate of £40 in some online cases. Not £40 for every single hour of every single day, but £40 per hour just for the hours involved in the process. Don't try to convince that technology is responsible for achieving that!! It is simply opportunist 'sales' people that think the ill-informed public can be fooled.
I do agree that some high Street agencies are grossly overpaid for being mediocre. That, by association, does not make every high-street agency complicit and, hopefully the flicker of interest that online has created will see the demise of such agents. The good and the great high Street agents will do better, leaving the simply mediocre high Street agents to continually fight a battle with onkine for the minds of those consumers, not prepared to think.
My wife and I have been embroiled in a very fraught house move for many months. We engaged the services of a 'traditional' high street agent to sell our house and we honestly can't speak highly enough of the service we've received. We did negotiate an acceptable fee at the start to both parties, but felt that if we scrimped we wouldn't get the service and how right we were. Numerous fall throughs, renegotiations, out of hours accompanied viewings etc etc later, all handled expertly and patiently by our agent followed, but at last we are on our way. Do we regret our choice? Do we wish we'd chosen an online agent and saved a few quid? Do we think we'd have had the same service from an online agent? What do you think?
More deliberately antagonising comment from Mr Q-short shrift here as no credence or time will be attributed to such nonsense
Just wanted to say what utter tosh.
I think that's Mr Quirk's middle name. He's a very shrewd and canny operator - he knows how to get his name in the press, he knows how to get column inches, he knows how to ruffle the feathers of those he's eager to annoy, and he does all this in such a shameless manner. The way he conducts himself in the press brings to mind a certain Katie Hopkins. Obviously Quirk isn't as bad as her - is anyone? - but is equally brilliant at self-promotion and making crass, ill-judged, untrue and sweeping generalisations whenever he opens his mouth.
WOW, that means negotiators who get paid 10% commission on all their personal sales will earn on an average 50 hour week £4960 per week and an annual salary of over £250,000 per annum, now the fact is even the top tier of negotiators earn about 20% of that amount (if they work in the south), it is hard to believe how any part of his argument stacks up. Surely if that is put out there and under the Emoov brand then surely the ASA should be looking very closely at these figures which I am sure will be mass produced. If I am wrong and negotiators are earning over £250,000 per year then I have definitely worked for the wrong agencies over the last twenty years!
Maybe Russell could reveal how much he and his staff earns? Practice what he preaches and all that.
I've just realised I work 1 hour a week.
now what do I do with the rest of my time?
Where do I sign up for this type of money?
I wonder how much they pay their 'local property experts' or whatever eMoov call 'em...
Dear, dear, dear Russell. At least TRY to engage your brain before spouting such absolute nonsense.
Another spouting of utter nonsence from Mr Quirk given airtime. Thankfully the comments on here are a much better and balanced view.
Looks like Mr Quirk's words have gone down as well as they usually do! Seriously, what man does that planet live on?
Quirk world...inhabitants one. #deluded
Was supposed to say "what planet does that man live on", but "what man does that planet live on" kind of works as well, in a weird way :)
£992 or £922?
typo in the title.
It's all well and good having this sort of thing on a trade forum and let's face it we all enjoy having a pop back in the comments. I just hope, hope and hope this doesn't get picked up in consumer press as it's a load of misleading rubbish!
Wow, what a hugely misleading and 'headline grabbing' comment from eMoov.
As agents, we all know that sometimes things are smooth sailing and agreeing sales/exchanging the transaction is straightforward, however for each of those deals, there are easily 2/3 that are not. Even if this claim of 15 hours to agree a sale is remotely accurate - based on my experience it is way off the mark! - how about the countless hours/days/weeks/months of chasing the sale down, holding it all together to finally reach the exchange if it gets there at all?!
Just as an example, I have this week exchanged on a property that the current sale has been going through since August. Add to that the fact that I have had to agree three sales on this property over the past 18 months as the sellers had difficulty finding a property and previous purchasers have withdrawn, that equals a lot of man hours in marketing/viewing/sales chasing. My 'hourly rate' on that sale, well, I actually don't want to know........!
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