Online vs Local Estate Agents - what you need to know!
The housing market has changed. It is now far more difficult to sell houses, and it’s becoming ever more important to choose your Estate Agent carefully! In this five-minute read, Ben explains why you should do your research and think carefully before choosing your Estate Agent.
Gone are the days when Agents could get away with putting a house on Rightmove with a handful of photos, and within hours, you would be getting enquiries from desperate buyers.
In the period between when the market opened back up after COVID-19 and late 2022, we would have 5 or 6 buyers for every property that went on the market. However, since the market has become much tougher, more and more Online Agents have fallen dramatically from grace.
We've seen Purplebricks sell for £1 to rival firm Strike. Purplebricks is still trading under the same name, and they have a sales success rate of around 70%. However, rival firm Yopa only has a 56% success rate—these stats are taken from the website homeowners alliance.
Don't be fooled by their claims. They charge nothing for selling your house - they itemise all aspects of what you'll need to sell, such as For Sale boards, listing on Rightmove and viewings, which you pay extra for.
With most of these online agents charging upfront fees regardless of whether they sell the property or not, you actually have a 30% chance of losing your money with Purplebricks. However, with Yopa, this is closer to 50%! We have listed and sold many properties after clients have already paid an online agent.
Those TV Adverts…
Independent companies like Keystone choose not to allocate huge budgets to TV ads. We don’t want to compete with property giants making all sorts of claims about saving you thousands in fees.
We will, however, only charge you if we sell your house at a price you’re happy with when the job is done.
Online estate agents might be able to save you money on fees, but when you consider we were achieving on average around 4% more (according to the website Homeowners Alliance) for your home (for a property of £200k, this would be £8,000!), then the extra money you pay in fees for a far superior service is going to be worth it.
Local Knowledge
We know our stuff when it comes to the local property market. All our staff have grown up in the Flintshire area. I have owned an estate agency here for 16 years. That’s definitely another thing that puts us ahead of national online estate agents; they may say they have local experts in your area… but that local expert could be spread across a 30-mile radius. So, do they really know what’s going on? Do they know that this area has its own micro market because of the enormous amount of industry in Flintshire? Probably not!
You are more likely to get an accurate valuation of your property with an agent who is genuinely local. We have the local knowledge that those bigger companies don’t have.
Buyer Network
Since introducing our heads-up property alerts in March 2021, we’ve had thousands of registrations from local buyers. The beauty of our system is that it uses AI (Artificial intelligence) to recognise when someone is in the market—like a mailing list on steroids!
From our point of view, this system is a dream! Daily, our system tells us which potential buyers to call based on how active they’ve been and which properties they’ve been looking at!
Having that local buyer network is imperative in a tougher market. You need to be proactive, and my team is always speaking to active buyers and encouraging them to view our properties.
Solicitors
One very prominent online agent will actually charge you more if you don’t use their recommended solicitors – make sure of this before you sign up, as it can be significantly more.
I speak to many solicitors, and they have complained about very poor communication from some of the solicitors selected for clients of online Estate Agents, which slows everything down.
At Keystone, we work with carefully selected local solicitors who have proven over many years that they can work quickly and efficiently to get your property to successful completion. From the moment your property goes under offer, we will chase both solicitors weekly and keep you and your buyer updated via a shared portal. It is vital to be the glue that holds the sale together to ensure your property sale ends up with a successful completion.
Service with a Smile
With something as important as selling, which is probably your biggest asset, it really is not worth trying to save a few hundred pounds on fees. Our strategy has been proven over the last 16 years to ensure you achieve the highest possible price for your home. Yes, we charge more than an online agent, but the service you will receive is on another level; the presentation of your property will be second to none and on top of all that, you will have an expert team guiding you through the whole process. You can also drop into our office on the High Street in Connah’s Quay for a chat instead of trying to get through to a busy call centre.
Remember, we now cover every area in Flintshire, so if you are thinking of selling soon, click on the link below 👇
Best Regards
Ben Roberts
Managing Director
Keystone Property & Mortgage Centre
t: 01244 836636 e: ben@keystonepmc.co.uk
a: 117 High Street, Connah's Quay, Flintshire CH5 4DF
w: www.keystonepmc.co.uk
Looking for a property in the Flinsthire area? We are one of the biggest selling agents in the county of Flintshire. All of our new properties go out on our heads-up property alert system at least five days BEFORE they hit Rightmove. Make sure you register today so you don't miss out!
We cover the whole of Flintshire and welcome business from the following areas: Wirral, Chester, Wrexham, and Denbighshire.