Sunday, Apr 01, 2007
Far Too late - the damage is done
Firstrung: Compulsory licensing for all estate agents in the UK overdue - Halifax Estate Agents
"We're urging other estate agents to follow our lead. Minimum competency standards and professional qualifications are integral to ensuring consumers receive the right advice and a high level of service."
Nu Liebour = Estate Agents = Leeches
Posted by sirgoogle @ 08:29 AM (191 views) Add Comment
5 Comments
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1. sirgoogle said...
Implications from this statement from Halifax Estate Agents are that even the EAs know deep down that they are scum.
Interesting thought - The teflon PM and Crash Gordon - are they really Estate Agents? - They manilulate the facts to an extent that even an EA might blush.
Discuss.
2. converted lurker said...
I'd suggest tighter regulation is on the way and massive consolidation with the OEA finally getting teeth. Is it me? Everywhere you look at the industry overall - whether that be; BTL, mortgage lending, landlords, agents...it's all becoming so regulated you can see it becoming a big turn off for so many. Combine the increased red tape with tighter credit, higher intrest rates, and a falling market and you begin to wonder (as prices fall) just how long it'll take to recover? 25 years until wages catch up?
3. Gordon Blair said...
I didn't see the link between estate agents and new labour presented in the article. Perhaps you might point out where it was?
What I don't understand is where there are huge profit margins to be made in an industry that requires no qualifications, and little experience, why isn't there any competition offering some kind of value for money?
4. paolo88888 said...
I have never really thought of estate agents as a profession requiring a high degree of competency such as doctors or accountants. If you want to you can avoid them completely by putting your own advert in the local paper and showing potential buyers around yourself. In practice it may not be so easy if you work in a full time job, and home owners showing their own property tend to do a bad job by talking too much and unwittingly pointing out all the faults. So often it is better to use an estate agent, but their function is to do the same things with a bit more experience. I really don't understand the venom they attract ("deep down that they are scum"), except that they are often the bringers of bad news, when buyers drop out or are never found for ages. The ones I have encountered have been pleasant enough but I don't have a particular view of them because they don't make decisions, they are functionaries.
5. sirgoogle said...
Paolo88888,
I am pleased that you have had good experiences with EAs. Mine have all been nightmares. Admittedly the last one tried to cheat us was Dutch. The Dutch EAs have some additional responsibilities that UK EAs do not have - and therefore are not purely functionaries. They also are known to collaborate and price fix an area to maintain their commission. However the honesty issue is common on both sides of the North Sea and from my experiences in the UK market in the 80s and 90s I am not convinced that the UK EAs are whiter than white.
I think that the "minimum competency standards and professional qualifications" mentioned in the article is long overdue and I hope that a proper professional register is maintained - so that EAs cannot practice without being on it - and can be also struck off for malpractice.
I would hope that web selling will become the norm - so that the number of properties held by EAs can go up - meaning that the actual numbers of EAs can drop. This would then provide the impetus for professionalisation.