You may be aware of an upcoming wedding, but you might not be aware of how it ties is with my favourite subject - estate agency. It's all to do with the Wedding List. In times gone by, it would be included with the invitation, originally, presumably, to put an end to the happy post-nuptial couple's present-unwrapping mantra. "Look, darling! Another toaster!" "Just put it over there with the rest of them, dear." But now we're all living our lives online, the Wedding List has gone online, too.
Writing or, at best, printing or photocopying numerous gift lists was laborious. So given the facility where you can visit a website and quickly and easily see the choice of pressies to buy and then click on one and pay for it, so saving a trip to the shop entirely is far, far more straightforward and efficient. Enjoyable even.
So - where's the tie-in with estate agency, then? It's because we've been brought up to want to own our own home. "Bricks and mortar - safest investment", said our parents, their parents before them and perhaps even their parents before them. But to choose which investment to make in the first place required tramping up and down the high street, peering at estate agents' windows and the properties displayed there. And then sitting down at desk after desk after desk and repeating the description of your ideal home you'd just given to at least three agencies since lunchtime. Or there was the frantic search for the property section in the local free weekend paper, the grab for the phone at the sight of the perfect property for you ... and that little sniff of disappointment when you finally get through to the agency only to discover that a nice couple from Birmingham bought it on Wednesday.
But those days are over. Long gone, thanks to the internet. Let's go on holiday: Airline ticket? Click - bought. Hotel room? Click - booked. Travel insurance? Click - done. Let's buy a house: Four-bedroom detached house with conservatory, huge garden and field views? Click - Sorted.
Rightmove launched in 1999, and has dominated the property search market pretty well ever since. Together with competitors like Zoopla, Prime Location and Findaproperty, it accounts for more than 90% of all property searches today. That's over ten million unique visitors each month, all ready to buy. Do over ten million people troll around high street estate agencies each month? No, nothing like. Not any more. And that, says Ordnance Survey, is why nearly one tenth of high street branch offices have closed down in the past three years.
But it doesn't stop at buyers. Sellers, too, can go online and sell. And if they can do that, what's the point of estate agencies maintaining expensive town centre offices that nobody's going to visit? But if someone's brave or foolish enough to do that, there's a huge selling commission waiting for them at the end of the day. Mainly because the agency has to charge that kind of fee to pay for renting and running their office. There's really no point in paying an agency an average of 3,000 to sell your home just because it's got lots of bills for operating lots of office that you're never going to visit.
- So the future of property sales is virtual. - Online agencies are more accessible. - Online agencies guarantee more exposure for your property. - Online agencies charge considerably less than high street agencies. - It's the perfect modern marriage: homeowner and estate agent. - Those whom the internet hath joined together, let no man put asunder.
Writing or, at best, printing or photocopying numerous gift lists was laborious. So given the facility where you can visit a website and quickly and easily see the choice of pressies to buy and then click on one and pay for it, so saving a trip to the shop entirely is far, far more straightforward and efficient. Enjoyable even.
So - where's the tie-in with estate agency, then? It's because we've been brought up to want to own our own home. "Bricks and mortar - safest investment", said our parents, their parents before them and perhaps even their parents before them. But to choose which investment to make in the first place required tramping up and down the high street, peering at estate agents' windows and the properties displayed there. And then sitting down at desk after desk after desk and repeating the description of your ideal home you'd just given to at least three agencies since lunchtime. Or there was the frantic search for the property section in the local free weekend paper, the grab for the phone at the sight of the perfect property for you ... and that little sniff of disappointment when you finally get through to the agency only to discover that a nice couple from Birmingham bought it on Wednesday.
But those days are over. Long gone, thanks to the internet. Let's go on holiday: Airline ticket? Click - bought. Hotel room? Click - booked. Travel insurance? Click - done. Let's buy a house: Four-bedroom detached house with conservatory, huge garden and field views? Click - Sorted.
Rightmove launched in 1999, and has dominated the property search market pretty well ever since. Together with competitors like Zoopla, Prime Location and Findaproperty, it accounts for more than 90% of all property searches today. That's over ten million unique visitors each month, all ready to buy. Do over ten million people troll around high street estate agencies each month? No, nothing like. Not any more. And that, says Ordnance Survey, is why nearly one tenth of high street branch offices have closed down in the past three years.
But it doesn't stop at buyers. Sellers, too, can go online and sell. And if they can do that, what's the point of estate agencies maintaining expensive town centre offices that nobody's going to visit? But if someone's brave or foolish enough to do that, there's a huge selling commission waiting for them at the end of the day. Mainly because the agency has to charge that kind of fee to pay for renting and running their office. There's really no point in paying an agency an average of 3,000 to sell your home just because it's got lots of bills for operating lots of office that you're never going to visit.
- So the future of property sales is virtual. - Online agencies are more accessible. - Online agencies guarantee more exposure for your property. - Online agencies charge considerably less than high street agencies. - It's the perfect modern marriage: homeowner and estate agent. - Those whom the internet hath joined together, let no man put asunder.
About the Author:
Done with paying high estate agents fees you could join the growing number of people turning to internet estate agents eMoov. eMoov will visit you to take all the details of your estate including great looking photographs and will then advertise it on all of the UK's top 25 property websites including Rightmove. Fees on sales start from just 99. What are you waiting for...?
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