Rhuthun's Estate Agents—1
Today, a leaflet advertising the Fair Fee estate agency was pushed through my letterbox. It said "now open". Except, of course, it isn't "open" in the traditional sense. It has no high street presence. With over 90 per cent of referrals now made online through a property portal, why bother with expensive rent, rates, heating, lighting… and loads of staff?
No longer do expectant purchasers await the weekly local newspaper. No longer do they watch the post for the latest bundle of promo house leaflets. Nor yet do they press their noses against estate agents' windows. In fact, the estate agent's office is pretty much redundant. These days, it's a posting house for online material. The relevancy of a high street office seems to be for anxious vendors who badger their agents if their house isn't getting viewings.
Fair Fee's only points of contact were a website and three telephone numbers, one for Yr Wyddgrug/Mold, one for Bwcle/Buckley and one on the leaflet only for Rhuthun/Ruthin. That for Rhuthun was an 01978 number. Its base in Yr Wyddgrug was in Cilcain, not the easiest place to reach. In fact, why would you? Or, rather, there's no need, thanks to a portal.
It is so new that it appears there were no Fair Fee properties for sale on Zoopla under Yr Wyddgrug and no mention on that site under Rhuthun or Bwcle.
Fair Fee is one of the emerging low cost estate agents. In fact, it's Rhuthun's first virtual estate agency, although national online agents do have a presence here, such as Express, eMoov and 121move.co.uk.
Yet, start-ups have failed to revolutionise sales as expected, certainly to date. By "revolutionise" I mean reduce fees for vendors. It's early days for Fair Fee, of course, but there are currently only two Rhuthun properties with other low cost online agencies (and one of those is also with the local Beresford Adams office). That's only three per cent of houses for sale within the town itself. If this grows with Fair Fee, established agents will suffer. It doesn't take much of a squeeze of margins to force structural change (downsizing, redundancies, closures). Don't expect sympathy from the public, though.
Established agents need to fund their offices and staff. Online agents don't have this burden. Both, however, have to pay for property portals. There's a view among most agents that the oligopoly fronted by the dominant Big Two—Zoopla & Rightmove—has driven up portal prices dramatically.
On Monday, there'll be yet another competing online property portal. It's called onthemarket.com. Good news for the customer or do we need another such site?
Ask Williams Estates & Cavendish Ikin and you'll get a very different response to Beresford Adams. What the public doesn't see is that onthemarket is the estate agency's deliberately ploy to break the Zoopla & Rightmove stranglehold. Estate agents could only watch as portal power has grown and it's reported that Rightmove is increasing fees by 15-20 per cent a year. onthemarket is a mutual or co-operative (run by an organisation called Agents' Mutual), effectively owned by the agents who subscribe. onthemarket's terms are that participants shall only support one of either Zoopla or Rightmove alongside onthemarket. onthemarket believes that this is the only way to break the dominant two and this is where others failed, by running alongside rather than in competition with The Two. onthemarket says,
As a result, enthusiastic supporters of onthemarket Cavendish Ikin and Williams Estates have jettisoned Zoopla but remain on Rightmove. Rightmove is the most popular property portal and they'd be foolish to leave. Beresford Adams, on the other hand, remains with Zoopla & Rightmove and has no truck with onthemarket. The reason for this fragmentation is because Beresford Adams' owner Countrywide is understood to be a shareholder in Zoopla.
Is all this good news for the consumer, the hapless vendor who has to pay between 1 and 1½ per cent of the purchase price plus VAT to their agent? Remember, rising house prices since the low of 2008 means rising revenue for agents. It seems that the miserable vendor will once again suffer:
Today, a leaflet advertising the Fair Fee estate agency was pushed through my letterbox. It said "now open". Except, of course, it isn't "open" in the traditional sense. It has no high street presence. With over 90 per cent of referrals now made online through a property portal, why bother with expensive rent, rates, heating, lighting… and loads of staff?
It is so new that it appears there were no Fair Fee properties for sale on Zoopla under Yr Wyddgrug and no mention on that site under Rhuthun or Bwcle.
Fair Fee is one of the emerging low cost estate agents. In fact, it's Rhuthun's first virtual estate agency, although national online agents do have a presence here, such as Express, eMoov and 121move.co.uk.
Yet, start-ups have failed to revolutionise sales as expected, certainly to date. By "revolutionise" I mean reduce fees for vendors. It's early days for Fair Fee, of course, but there are currently only two Rhuthun properties with other low cost online agencies (and one of those is also with the local Beresford Adams office). That's only three per cent of houses for sale within the town itself. If this grows with Fair Fee, established agents will suffer. It doesn't take much of a squeeze of margins to force structural change (downsizing, redundancies, closures). Don't expect sympathy from the public, though.
Established agents need to fund their offices and staff. Online agents don't have this burden. Both, however, have to pay for property portals. There's a view among most agents that the oligopoly fronted by the dominant Big Two—Zoopla & Rightmove—has driven up portal prices dramatically.
"Open for business". The launch of onthemarket is the first property portal to have such razzle-dazzle. And who at Cavendish is 21 and georgous? See mug, top right
On Monday, there'll be yet another competing online property portal. It's called onthemarket.com. Good news for the customer or do we need another such site?
Ask Williams Estates & Cavendish Ikin and you'll get a very different response to Beresford Adams. What the public doesn't see is that onthemarket is the estate agency's deliberately ploy to break the Zoopla & Rightmove stranglehold. Estate agents could only watch as portal power has grown and it's reported that Rightmove is increasing fees by 15-20 per cent a year. onthemarket is a mutual or co-operative (run by an organisation called Agents' Mutual), effectively owned by the agents who subscribe. onthemarket's terms are that participants shall only support one of either Zoopla or Rightmove alongside onthemarket. onthemarket believes that this is the only way to break the dominant two and this is where others failed, by running alongside rather than in competition with The Two. onthemarket says,
"It’s time to take back control before it's too late… we can disrupt the market, becoming stronger at the competition's expense"
"It's time to unlock the chains. We need to take back control before it's too late"
As a result, enthusiastic supporters of onthemarket Cavendish Ikin and Williams Estates have jettisoned Zoopla but remain on Rightmove. Rightmove is the most popular property portal and they'd be foolish to leave. Beresford Adams, on the other hand, remains with Zoopla & Rightmove and has no truck with onthemarket. The reason for this fragmentation is because Beresford Adams' owner Countrywide is understood to be a shareholder in Zoopla.
Rightmove started in 1999 and ironically one of its four founders was Countrywide (who own Beresford Adams). For over five years, beresfordadams.co.uk pointed directly to Rightmove
Is all this good news for the consumer, the hapless vendor who has to pay between 1 and 1½ per cent of the purchase price plus VAT to their agent? Remember, rising house prices since the low of 2008 means rising revenue for agents. It seems that the miserable vendor will once again suffer:
- onthemarket is for the benefit of agents, not vendors. Agents will use onthemarket for their own ends
- onthemarket is only open to estate agents with high street offices. After all, it's run by existing agents. onthemarket is therefore a means of sidelining cheaper, online agents. Is this in the public's or in existing estate agents' interests? It certainly sidelines Fair Fee and its ilk
- Unless onthemarket quickly becomes as large as Rightmove, using onthemarket and only one other portal potentially restricts online exposure and in fact halves your property's publicity. How does this help the vendor?
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Housing