Housing commentator Pryor warns that half of industry is ‘sleep walking to oblivion’

Housing market commentator and buying agent Henry Pryor has stood by a remark made to the Telegraph that too many agents have become “fat and lazy”.

The Telegraph article claims that “British home owners are finding new ways to sell their homes in a bid to combat high estate agent fees, which typically range from 1% to 3.5%”.

The “new ways”, according to the article, include advertising on Facebook, eBay and Gumtree, raffling your property, and swapping your property for another.

The article quotes Pryor as saying: “Expect to see more imaginative ways that people come up with to promote their properties.

“Too many estate agents have forgotten how to sell. Having spent years just uploading adverts on to Zoopla, they’ve become fat and lazy, leaving the door open to new marketeers to do their selling for them.”

Pryor confirmed to EYE that he had been quoted accurately but said that he had also told the Telegraph that “95% of sellers still use an agent due to the reliability of selling what for many people is their biggest financial asset”.

Wording similar to this appears in the article, but is not attributed to Pryor.

Pryor also told EYE: “Other ways of disposing of properties seem to be in vogue at the moment – usually because sellers don’t take the advice from agents who tell them that what they want to achieve isn’t realistic. I’ve done quite a bit of both radio and print in the last few days usually recommending that people hire an agent.”

However, he said: “The problem with many agents is that they don’t nurture a mailing list, they don’t mail out to applicants or to past clients.

“Time and again I get a Rightmove alert before I get the email from the agent and I can’t tell you the last time I got paper particulars. Too many just stick them up online and wait.

“Online agents can do that for a fraction of the price.

“If your agent isn’t going to call their applicants, mail them, and actually ‘sell’ the property, then the online brigade are going to have 90% of the market. Why would anyone pay more?

“Half our industry is sleep walking to oblivion. They already struggle to justify their fee model and, whatever the detractors think, the public likes what they are being offered.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/buy/five-unusual-ways-can-sell-house-including-facebook-live-gumtree/

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14 Comments

  1. Chris Wood

    I don’t agree with Henry on many things nowadays but on his fat and lazy comment, I do. I would say a small majority of agents do not bother phoning out, visiting the property, and actually ‘selling’ the viewings to buyers but, rely on automated systems and statistical probability* to do the work for them. Consequently, sellers are poorly served and buyers have a lacklustre experience. The consequence is that sellers look elsewhere for better value the next time and buyers, who become sellers, do likewise.

    The average fee is sub 1.3% in the U.K. Good agents are worth much more than this. Drive out the bad, the lazy, the dishonest and the incompetent and customers will be better served and good agents will be able to charge a better rate for their experience, knowledge and skills.

     

    *Throw enough mud at a wall and some will stick.

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    1. ShaunAmner15

      I couldn’t agree more. Proactivity on the part of the agent is key, especially given the impact on price achieved if the property isn’t under offer within the first 3 – 4 weeks.
      I’m a huge believer that the agents job is to sell viewings, not property and by simply waiting for the phone to ring, you are letting down your vendors. 
      The problem agents face is demonstrating to vendors their approach and resulting outcomes and how they are different to their competition. This is something the Trueview Property App can really help with by allowing agents to demonstrate and showcase their performance in terms of time until sale agreed, number of viewings generated and the sale agreed price achieved.

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      1. P-Daddy

        There you are, Pryor has for once united agents with his comments! Certainly those who are serious and understand that the interweb is just a tool…nothing more; its people who sell and buy houses, its not the houses that ring up!

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  2. Simon Bradbury

    Henry is absolutely right!

    Dealing with prospective buyers and tenants in a proactive manner is a fantastic opportunity for agents to show potential sellers landlords why they need an agent.

    If we estate agents do not demonstrate that we add value ( as opposed to simply claiming it) then we will rightly be punished by both sellers and buyers.

    Reminds me of the old adage…

    “Don’t tell me you’re funny – make me laugh!

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  3. Robert May

    Fat and lazy?  Nah, that’s an oxymoron; a lazy agent is a hungry agent.  A lot of  agents are struggling to keep the lights on, paying staff ahead of themselves, but that has nothing to do with being lazy. It is wrong to stereotype agents who might close over the next few years as lazy. Times are tough and the agents I am talking to are far from lazy.

    Back in the day when the likes of the Pru were offering cheap commissions Agents struggled against the market and their competition, many closed and many struggled through those times.  The market  has become over extended by low interest rates so traditional  selling strategies have to change.

    Estate agents are also up against internet listing firms who are being paid and fed with other people’s cash. It isn’t lazy to not know how to compete in an industry that is very much against you; Election, Brexit, Election, artificial prices and  temporary increased competition means agents are far from fat and far from lazy.

     

     

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  4. NickTurner

    As a fellow buying agent the comments by Henry , while being probably eye catching and slightly over the top are correct, so in that respect thay have done what he wanted them to do!.

    However there are some very good agents out there working very hard and still using their mailing lists and trying to sell the properties for their clients. These agents are well trained and have a breadth of age experience within their offices that is passed on.There are also some very bad agents and they will not last long.

    The age of the internet and the various portals has made a large number of estate agents , often through lack of knowledge and training, rely only on these portals.How often have I contacted  a firm of esate agents asking about their properties to be told  ‘ they are all on our website’. Red rag to a bull.

    I started out in agency in the late 1970’s and was trained very well in the basics – client/ principal. Black book list of red hot buyers, card indexes, telephone etc. No internet just hard graft.

    With modern methods of communication the portals are a great aid to selling but the basics of keeping in touch with your applicants/buyers in person on a regular basis has been lost by some agents and never learnt by  others.

    Over the years aids in selling have made our life easier or quicker? It used to be go to property, get instruction, measure up with rule or tape( now a quick ping both ways with the sonic tape), take pictures and send off to Courtwood in Penzance by post or a polaroid for quickness ( now digital) dictate to secretary and correct draft with tippex and post to client ( now emailed)  and within a week or so the propery goes  on the market ( now often the same day listed). Oh and mail out the details to the applicants and post out. ( now hardly ever done but email alert or let the portal deal with it)

    Sit back and wait…………….

    Enjoy the sunshine!

     

     

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    1. gk1uk2001

      I fondly remember having 3 or 4 boxes of applicant cards on my desk – Hot buyers, Local (potential vendors), on market out of area and NYOM. I still prefer this way of working as you knew your applicants really well as you spoke to them very frequently. Whereas the younger generation of new agents coming through have no concept of this and very much rely on slinging it up on the internet portals and then sitting back and waiting for the phone to ring or emails to come in regarding their properties. Drives me mad!

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      1. AgencyInsider

        Spot on gk1uk2001. Give me a card box and a telephone and I will still outsell any young whippersnapper who is armed with a computer and no real idea of how to properly qualify and deal with applicants.

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  5. hodge

    How many agency staff have never seen the property they are selling? How many  clients get the right move alert before any details are sent or a phone call made. Top salesman are now those that answer the phone first to take a viewing or take an offer. I was walking past a local independent yesterday who just sat at his desk on rightmove for 10 mins while i peered through the window.

     

    We are currently selling my late mother in laws property and vans came in at 320 up to 390k and all quoted 0.75 % without any quibble.

    2 x corporate and 2 x local with vans so different, Really???

    Is it surprising  Purplebricks do well and will continue to do well.

    I worked for a large independent in the SE on FS and many of the so called Directors don’t even visit the offices and earn 150K plus.

     

    So fat and lazy is not far from the mark.

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  6. surrey1

    When I moved a few years ago I was astounded by how few calls I received. Whilst I’m unconvinced facebook and raffles are the future of property marketing, there’s much to be said for old school picking up a phone and understanding the what, when, where, why motivations of buyers. Don’t think I was even asked most of those questions when I registered. One agent was still emailing me 9 months after we completed on our new home, never checked if we were still looking.

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  7. NickTurner

    Looks like there are still some of us out there knowing what the real business is about!

    The modern method in some offices of having a listings person, a viewing person, a negotiator, a sales progression chaser, a ‘i’m sorry I answered the phone but I haven’t a clue person’  does seem to water down the effectiveness and add to the wage bill? Ok when times are good possibly but when times are harder well…. It is always so frustrating when nobody in an office has seen a propertyt because the person who took it on is on holiday.

    While I am not advocating turning the clock completely back ( why not do I hear some say?) the systen wasn’t broke it just was overtaken by computers  completly  while they were initially a very useful aid. Good effective agents these days know how to use modern aids but also use their brains well.

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  8. PeeBee

    Okay – here’s the ‘delicious irony’ thing about this.

    Mr Pryor may just ever so slightly be onto something with a sniff of a shred of truth to it.

    Of course, there’s as much – if not more – total b0ll0cks as there is stuff that hits the nail on the head.

    However the main problem is that in past, near-present (including the words within this article) and I’ll stick a Purple on expecting same in future he’s tried soooo hard – and succeeded soooo brilliantly – to thoroughly wazz off or otherwise alienate the majority of Agents with previous self-promotional *********** (credit: Jonnie) that no-one really wants to acknowledge he’s got a pointlet or two.

    His incessant sideswiping at the industry which has looked after him extremely well, it seems, does nothing other than make us all wrack our brains in order to come up with new derogatory monickers to use either behind his back or here on EYE – in a similar vein to his swipes at our ranks where some of us were reduced at the pressing of the ‘Post Comment’ icon to to ‘bacteria’… ‘pond-life’ and othersuch lower forms of biological classification.

    But then – I would say that, wouldn’t I – seeing as I’m down there at the very bottom of his very deep pond…

    Hopefully he will stick to what he posted on Tw@tter which will save him from reading my insolent gnawing.  I purposefully left it late so that those who apparently like to keep in his good(ish) books could stoke his fire a bit for him before I audaciously pee all over the smouldering embers.

    That post?

    *don’t read below the fold Henry, don’t read below the fold…*

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  9. cbrotherhood

    Are Mr Pryor’s comments not solely focusing on the selling aspect of what an estate agent does?  It seems to me that he has chosen not to acknowledge the fact that this is not really what a client is paying an agent for nowadays.  As he states, pretty much anybody can sell a property using a variety of methods that are available to everybody, not just agents.  I agree with this point.  Times have changed.  Selling a property is no longer the area that requires the most skill.  Keeping a sale together and making sure it goes through to completion is.

    It is the responsibility of property professionals, those who have a modicum of respect and awareness for what estate agents do, to raise awareness of the true value of a good estate agent in the process of selling a property.  Using expertise to assess who the best buyer is, chasing financial advisers, conveyancers and any number of other agents involved in a chain to get the sale through to completion is, among other things, what takes the most time and skill in today’s market.  Oh and of course there’s the tricky issue of discussing and potentially renegotiating sale figures due to surveys etc that raise concern.  What is the point in agreeing a sale if the chances of it actually reaching completion are so vastly reduced because you haven’t got anyone putting in the work to get it there?

    People like Mr Pryor and all the other ‘commentators’ on the industry should stop lambasting agents for being ‘lazy’, ‘behind the times’ and ‘stagnant’ (words which I have seen used to describe agents numerous times since the rise of the online agent) and instead start promoting and helping to raise public awareness of the true value of the high street agent.

    If we could shed a little more light on what an agent does, there would be no need for the scaremongering surrounding the ‘threat’ of the online agent.  But of course repeatedly telling agents that they are going to go out of business unless they impliment new fandangled procedures that all require expensive training and new computer systems is good business for some of these commentators, trainers and business developers…

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    1. PeeBee

      cbrotherhood

      Maybe – just maybe – Mr Pryor and other ‘Buyers Agents’ don’t want those Agents who are actually good at their job to survive.  Maybe they have hope for a completely alternate future.

      Think about it…
       

       

       

      …I’ll hear the penny dropping – wherever you are!

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