There are two kinds of estate agents:
- The minority who embrace transparency, integrity and honesty.
- The rest.
All of the misleading and overvaluing that is carried out on a daily basis by “everyone else” is only possible because of the lack of transparency.
I hope to change that, by bringing total transparency to current market prices: an almost real time “exchange price index”.
It wil be as accurate as the land registry, but 6-9 months sooner.
It will shine a light on obvious overvaluing.
Most importantly, it will give honest agents the biggest stick they’ve ever had with which to beat the dishonest ones.
The BestAgent Community-Sourced House Price Index will have a larger sample size than any lender index, will record actual transactions as they happen, and be available to any agent is willing to contribute a their exchange data to the index.
It is the silver bullet that will be the beginning of the end of bad estate agency, it will speed time to sale for the whole market (making agency a more profitable business for those on the right side of it).
It will shorten transactions times.
It will reduce fall throughs.
It will stop serious sellers signing with the wrong agents once and for all, because sellers who choose their agent through BestAgent will also have immediate access to local exchange price data, to help them spot the gross overvaluations when they happen.
Good agents have been persistently cheated out of business they deserve by bad corporate policy, bad PropTech and bad culture in most large agencies.
As with most cheats, they get away with it for a while, but it always comes home to roost.
The truth always comes out in the end.
Honest, transparent agents: I am here to stand up publicly and promote you and what you do to home movers.
Dishonest agents: you will have a choice.
Either you can choose to end you wilful dishonest practice, (exploiting naive first time sellers and locking them into long sole agency contracts, then shamefully blaming those sellers for not lowering the price that you told them you could achieve, having failed them) and adopt a new approach to business that will make you sleep better at night,
Or
You can keep going with the dishonesty as long as you can, hating yourself for it a little bit more every day, until finally the market won’t give you business anymore.
Or you can just quit while you’re ahead and not ruin anyone else’s life plans for the sake of “commercial opportunity”.
There is no point in sugar coating this.
Estate agency as an industry has got worse and worse and worse overall to the point of embarrassment.
To the minority of good guys: I salute and respect you for your courage and integrity in staying true to yourself.
I hope you will sign up to BestAgent and consider the seller and viewing leads we are sending out every day, as well as gaining access to the new house price data that you’re helping to create.
I hope to meet you all soon.