Is that a headline appropriate for Brexit Day? Surely not. No, instead it’s a description of the results of a survey of 2,000 assessing their knowledge of the housing market.
And it appears that the public have very little understanding of house prices for a start.
Almost one in five people across the UK wrongly believed a four-bedroom barn conversion in Blackburn cost more than a two-bedroom penthouse in London; in reality there’s a £2.49m difference with the London home priced at £2.85m and the barn conversion £360,000.
An even higher proportion of Londoners were clueless: 25 per cent of people from the capital incorrectly believed that the Blackburn barn was the pricier option.
People were also confused when it came to the cost of a five-bedroom detached house in Norwich and a six-bedroom detached house in Suffolk.
One of these costs double the price of the other, although 35 per cent of those surveyed failed to correctly identify this: amongst 25 to 34 year olds no fewer than 46 per cent got the wrong answer.
When it comes to how well we know house prices in our local area, the majority of people in Leeds correctly predicted that a five-bedroom semi-detached property in their city is worth more than a three-bedroom detached house in Nottingham. But the people of Nottingham incorrectly assumed that the house in their city was the priciest.
The survey was conducted on behalf of online agency Housesimple; the agency’s chief executive, Sam Mitchell, says: “Property prices are a national obsession, so it’s interesting to see from the results that the majority of Brits may not know what they could get for their money in other parts of the country.”
You can try out the quiz for yourself here.
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Even less do homeowners understand what makes a great estate agency. Agencies will tell them it's their agency's competence. Review sites will them it's social approval. Regulators will tell them to choose those with the highest qualification.
Intuitively, though, vendors choose character. An agent they like and may yet come to trust.
When agents start making it easier for vendors to determine character, the best fit agent wins. Until then, vendors will continue to be manipulated and public perception of agent will continue to diminish.
And this survey helps Housesimple how? Think of all the selling fees that have paid for this work...oh wait!
Actually Chris, recent studies show that potential vendors are most influenced by really good and sustained marketing campaigns across social media and or television. Hence the stratospheric rise outside of the agency scene, of some really big online brands.
Agents may feel that vendors for example will use the local agent who has 40% of the sold boards and has been trading for 90 years and the team has 110 years of experience, but, the new agent with two, young tech savvy people running the show can really make themselves be seen as the Only Agent, via social media done correctly.
I have seen it happen in medium sized towns time and time again, the timescale about 18-months. Tech is changing everything.
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