HonestEA -

It could work out like that if there is a significant market pickup, but nothing is certain in life and it would not be right to blame the EA for this outcome IMHO. Again it depends whether you are a seller of preference or one of necessity. If you are a seller of necessity then not selling in 2 months will have some consequence that can be financially quantified (ie the opportunity cost of not selling) which should be considered when you are deciding whether to accept an offer which is below your initial expectations. Ultimately it is your perrogative as the client as to who you sell your property to and what price you decide to accept. If you genuinely feel that the valuation is too low, then keep on getting more agents around until you find one that agrees with what you want, that should not be too hard. It will not change the open market value at any given time however as the market value IS the best offer you are able to attract at the time you wish to sell. Past sales are a guide, but as to the future your crystal ball is just shiny as mine and probably just as accurate. All agents call the market as they see it at the point of valuation, pure and simple. Estate Agents are not the social conscience of the nation alas, they have a duty of care to achieve the best price for their client sellers. However, working in any local housing market as an EA gives you a previledged picture of the momentum or direction of the market at any given time and allows you to adjust your price recommendations accordingly. In my town as previously mentioned, I am giving valuations that reflect a downward drift of around 1% per month because that is what I am seeing in the prices of the sales that are being agreed. A good EA will have done his homework and should be able to provide you with all the recent sales of similar properties from all agents (not just his own), bring along the printout from the Land Registry to show you what the true historical figures achieved were and also show you what similar houses are already on the market that you would be competing against and how long they have been for sale. If the agent brings all this evidence to the table, the correct pricing point for your home should be self evident.

Commercial suicide for the large corporates to do this in a reducing volume environment. We have much higher fixed costs than small independent operators which I am still managing to cover with the higher fee strategy. The public wants ever more professional, well trained estate agents providing a fantastic service but at an ever reducing cost which is impossible to do in my experience. To take out the competition on fees alone we would need to be nearer £1000 than £2000, my average fee is just over £3000 at the moment which most people seem happy to pay for the service we offer. I would need to sell 3 times the amount of houses just to make the same amount of money, there is simply not that many sales to be had in the current marketplace even if I got to 100% marketshare which is never going to happen in the real world unless I am the last surviving agent in town. I can't deny that the cheap fees route works in a booming sellers market where the properties sell themselves. Every listing then is a virtually certain payday. In a buyers market you actually need to employ decent salespeople who can actually sell and with the average length of time on market extending to 63 days and rising according to Rightmove, the actual cost of marketing each individual property set against the fee returned starts to become critical.

Well the average price of £140000 equates to a a repayment mortgage of around £1000 per month, say £800 for interest only compared to £600 pcm for the rental of the same house. A 12% reduction to an average of around £125000 would close the gap enough for many local FTBs to consider it seriously provided they can raise the required deposit. My senior negotiator with 5 years experience is a typical FTB I reckon. He takes home around £30000 gross per annum in his late 20's and has said he will buy into the market when they reach the stamp duty threashold because the desire for a place of his own outweighs for him the possibilty of negative equity. He currently rents a 1 bed starter home for £400 pcm. Also at this price point, buy to let starts to hit break even again if you have a reasonable deposit provided the finance is still available. The rental price of £600 pcm has remained static for at least 3 years ironically due to oversupply from the buy to let sector. The forced sellers are a mixed bag of repossessions, over extended BTL and overloaded "must have it all now" generation. There are always forced sellers at any time in the market cycle. They are the most prized instructions in the marketplace right now because they will listen to professional market advice and market their properties accordingly which leads to real income for the estate agent. The numbers are creeping up but are yet to become the dominant driving force in the market. Until they do, this standoff will continue with an attritional drift downwards in prices in the order of around 1% per month which seems barely noticeable when you are working in the market on a daily basis. Most agents will give marketing price advice within a 5% range so the picture can be very confusing for the layman trying to get a feel for the market.

-35% Medway towns, 1 hour train journey and 30 miles from central london on the North Kent coast. We have spare roll of red carpet in the back office which I personally would be prepared to roll out . I would also be prepared to drive around to the vendors house and put the offer to them in person, especially if they were a seller of necessity. Waste of time if they were a preferential seller, would probably result in a disinstruction if I were to strongly recommend acceptance at the moment. Indicating to you which were the sellers of necessity and which were the preferential sellers would not be something I personally would feel comfortable with. Cannot speak for other agents in the High Street however.

Well for the vested interest point of view of continuing to earn a living in estate agency, I need this crash to be quick and large enough to attract enough first time buyers back into the market so that volumes are restored to more normal levels quickly. The reality is that without more forced sales to drive down the prices, it could be a long drawn out process which may take years to reach the bottom , similar to the last one. Very many estate agencies who do not start to help to drive down the prices now will not be in business in 6 months at current sale volumes in my opinion. The Spring selling season this year or lack of it will decide the pace of the correction. Many sellers are absolutely convinced that the market will recover as we move into Spring. If this fails to happen and more become forced sellers, then the prices will start to come off more quickly. In my town I reckon we will finish down around 10% this year which is not really a crash in the context of recent rises, but the downward trend will have started and will be just as hard to change the market sentiment on the way down as it was on the way up. Whilst I can mitigate the fall in volumes by raising my fees to some extent, the biggest problem is the broken chains. Chains are falling apart at the bottom left, right and centre for all of the reasons that you have just mentioned. When you work in the industry and see people who would have got a mortgage no problem six months ago now getting turned away, you see the reality of the credit crunch taking its toll at first hand. We have an in house mortgage advisor so I can see all the products being withdrawn and ammended on a daily basis. We are constantly reselling the same houses only for them to fall through and start over. So we are working quite hard to achieve considerably less in terms of income which only comes from the sales that do actually complete. The STR was a pragmatic choice to deal with a situation where my income ( which is performance related to completed sales volume) was falling and my outgoings were increasing. We decided as a couple that having tried for 15 long years to start a family that my wife would stay home and look after the child. To pay the mortgage and have any kind of quality of life on one income was becoming impossible, like many I was funding the deficit by borrowing and this is obviously unsustainable in the long term. To downsize would involve buying a house in an area that I did not particularly find inspiring, so we are now living in a far better neighbourhood in a larger house than we sold for £300 per month less than the old mortgage with no debts at all and the good lady is actually the happiest I have seen her in years. I dont think any honest man can put a price on that.

I had forgotten just how slow house price downturns are to gain momentum.... We are in a complete standoff at the moment. Most of the agents in my town are still ramping like there is no tommorow but they appear to be selling very little. I continue to give competitive valuations, am selling the vast majority of what I am able to get but cannot get nearly enough volume at the right prices to keep the corporate bosses happy. I pride myself on giving factual evidence based valuations, so when i do manage to get one on the market it is generally the right price and therefore sells even in this market. I have had to put the fees back up to a no compromise 2% sole or 3% multi agency to compensate for the reduced volumes. Most agents must be hoping for a Spring bounce , that is the only possible reason for continuing to stockpile masses of overpriced houses, hoping I suppose to stay in business long enough to talk the vendors down to sensible money. When the Spring bounce fails to materialise the long anticipated large scale job culls from our industry will begin in earnest. Small example to illustrate. The town where I currently work has a large sector of Victorian 2 Bed Terraced housing, the value of which is very easy to determine at any given time due the number of comparables available. In the peak of the market last Summer, a nice example was touching £150000 with around 6 on the market to choose from at any given time. By the end of 2007 these were sellling for £140000-145000 with around 20 to choose from. Today there are nearly 40 of these near identical places available for sale with all agents big and small priced variously between £135K and £145K. What do you think a professional agent acting in his clients best interests should be advising on price in the context of this market? I had a client today who was a preferential seller completely disregard my competitive valuation of £135000 in favour of a rival agent who looked her in the eye and told her with total conviction but no hard evidence that it would sell for £155000 ! The HPC is going to be exceedingly slow at this rate of progress. These houses will rent for £600 pcm and I reckon we will have to talk them down to below stamp duty (125K) before it looks attractive for a FTB to buy rather than rent. We have not registered a buy to let investor for many months now so the ramping effect from this sector has been all but eliminated locally. Sellers do not realise this yet , and are therefore expecting prices to remain consistent with last year or marginally down, when in reality, the bottom of the market is now being supported ONLY by demand from First Time Buyers who are not able to pay anywhere near these levels, are relatively few in number and understandably very hesitant to enter the market. A correction is therefore inevitable, it is just a case of how long it takes us to get there. There are some distressed sales coming through, but yet in sufficient numbers to force the market down to the level we require. At the other end of the market, a quality 1930s 3 bed family home in a stable neighbourhood near good schools attracts 12 viewings on the second day on the market with the vendor being in the happy position of having 3 offers very close to the asking price to choose from as I left the office today. Completed on my STR in JAN after a 6 months and 2 broken chains. Many of my estate agency collegues think I am completely mad. Now completely debt free with a tidy lump sum in the bank, hoping I am able to steer my family through what I expect to be fairly choppy waters ahead.

I wouldn't say it will be awful, at the end of the day any property is saleable in any market at the right price. You just have to know which ones to take on and which ones to politely decline as they are going to waste your time and earn you no money. I am flat out at the moment with new instructions, minimum of 4 ,sometimes up to 6 valuations a day so I can pick the ones I want and decline the rest. Not been in that situation since the early nineties. Sales are significantly harder to come by and EAs have to employ genuine salesmanship and provide good customer service and justify their title of "negotiator" by actually doing some negotiating! Interesting times ahead. Chains are indeed starting to break, still manageable numbers though. The true turning point is when I go into work one Monday morning and find that 80% of all my existing buyers on all my current sales have decided to withdraw due to change in sentiment. We are still not at that point yet. That is when EAs go out of business.

Well said. "The best things in life aren't things"

The architects of the the current housing bubble can be traced back to 2 policy decisions: 1 - The relaxation of tennants protection rights and:- 2 - The deregulation of the financial markets, including mortgage lending controls creating the exponential rise in BTL Both of these were Tory policy decisions which seemed reasonable at the time but have backfired on the country in a big way. Labour could have reversed either of these at any time in the last 10 years if they really wanted to control this boom but they failed to act so in effect both parties are complicit. Before these so called reforms, the housing market had a natural inbuilt braking mechanism which was FTB affordability. As soon as prices rose to the limit of FTB affordability, then the whole market slowed until their affordabilty was restored and then prices would rise again. This was because, prior to BTL, everyone, no matter how grand a house they were selling, needed a FTB to support the bottom of their chain. Reflecting on this point, I looked up some old statistics for when I started as an EA in 1992. In that year, 66% of our sales were to genuine owner occupier FTBs. Last year it was 7%. Everyone still needs someone to buy the house at the bottom of their chain. Draw your own conclusions.

This is indeed very wrong and goes to the heart of the problem . In all previous boom-bust cycles since the inception of the welfare state after WW2, the UK Social Security bill has risen in bust times and fallen back in good times . Equally the Govt of the day used to pay down the National debt in boom years and borrow more in bust times. The last ten years have well and trully broken this mould, with Govt borrowing rising and the Social Security bill soaring to a whopping £161 Billion, in so called good times. Defense only gets £30 Billion. At some point, somewhere down the line, whatever government is going to have to make real cuts because this level of expenditure is completely unsustainable in the long term. It cannot be right if you want to promote the work ethic that any set of benefits can be worth more than someone who works full time for the minimum wage. The actual level of the minimum wage is a matter for debate but the principle should stand. What needs to happen IMHO is that a citizen allowance should be made available to every UK adult at a subsistance level set by parliament for any UK citizen that wants to claim it. This needs to be a humane liveable allowance , but no more than a safety net as the architects of the Welfare State intended. There would need to be a transition period, with those currently getting more have their benefits progressively reduced over a reasonable notice period. This much simplified system would cut out the need for the whole benefits advisory industry, and ensure that those hard working people who do fall on hard times can be assured of a basic entitlement to tide them over which is not what happens at the moment at all.

From reading their methodology I would say that is true. They seem to look at the registry and look for properties that have been sold since 2000 and again in the month and then work out the increase. New builds won't appear in the figures because they have no history. However, the next time they sell, they will appear in the figures, so if there is quick turnround of a year or 2 on BTL they will filter through quickly enough. Also as mr beale suggests, it wouldn't take into account any extensions/improvements that have added value, so would therefore be overstated a little. Any deteriorating property is likely not to be counted as well, since they are likely to be old folk who have lived there for many years. Land Registry data does include New Builds. They even mark them as "NB". Look up any new or near new development on your area , use Rightmove home page Rightmove House Price Data which reference the land registry data and see for your self. Plenty of evidence there to to show real falls or at best break even over significant time period.

With respect please reread the first paragraph of my post more carefully. In a falling market, "X-y" is exactly what we do which what I meant when I said I offer lower valuations when properties start to stick. I am doing quite a lot of "X-y" at the moment as it happens. No bleating , just responding to local market conditions as all good EAs should do.

I am all for stricter regulation of the industry, "dumbfvck" or not. Bring it on. In fact lets go for the US realtor system where the EAs are strictly regulated and the fees are nearer 5% rather than our no barriers to entry open market 1-2%.

Stagnation on falling volumes leading to initially small price falls which gain momentum in direct proportion to the number of repossessions. I do not think it will be an overnight crash such as in 1988, more like death by a thousand small cuts which could play out over years.

Yes with interest.

Local EAs are of course going to ramp since they are paid by the seller to achieve the best possible price. We are not, nor are we ever going to be unfortunately, the social conscience of the nation. If I take instructions on a house in a street for £200K and sell it in a week for asking price, then if I go to value another identical in the same street I will advise 210K etc. I will continue to do this until I take one on that does not sell, when I will then start to offer lower figures. My duty of care is always to achieve the best price for the client seller. I do not give "valuations" but market apprasials or opinions as opposed to the RICS member who may be held legally accountable for the accuracy of his price. Many people do not realise that for many years until the wider availablity of internet data the The RICS Chartered Surveyor has simply phoned around 3 local EAs and asked them for comparable evidence to support his target valuation. As a long serving EA in one area, I used to get up to 10 calls a day from Chartered surveyors asking for comparable evidence to support their valuations and asking for my opinion on the direction of the market, getting to know many of the surveyors very well. These calls are not so frequent these days due to the transparency of data available , basically most comparables can be found with a professional membership of Rightmove which allows access to every property which has ever been on Rightmove, its status (Sold, On Market or Withdrawn) and the exact dates (ie how long it was on the market). Standing instructions to surveyors from Lenders used to be that they had to find 3 similar properties that had sold in the preceding 3 months within 5% of the proposed valuation or they must downvalue the property by 5%. Trouble is that a surveyor who goes around dilengently downlvaluing everything in sight in a rising market such as the last few years would not keep his job for very long because the lenders would lose too much business even if he has strong reservations about the prices. There is a lot of internal pressure on Chartered Surveyors who work for the large firms not to "rock the boat" so to speak, so the rising market is not constrained by "inconvenient" valuations. The real difficulty as we all know lies with New Builds ,particularly flats. When a new development first opens, the builder will often sell Plots 1,2, and 3 at the nominal contract price they want, with a significant cashback incentive in place which lowers the true price paid which is not disclosed to the lender or anyone else. However, a rock solid precedent in "achievable" price is set for the development. When the Chartered Surveyor turns up to do a valuation on plot 4, he may have severe reservations about the sale price, but what can he do when presented with the "irrefutable" evidence of Plots 1,2,and 3? Recently , however, the lenders are wising up, and are refusing to accept evidence from the same development, instead insisting on sold comparables from other developments. This is allowing the Surveyors to be more circumspect and is acting as a break on house price inflation on new builds, but it is a sign in itself of significant credit tightening as the lenders rediscover the concept of prudence.

EAs will never pay for a HIP upfront since it would be commercial suicide for all but the top LONDON agencies where average commission fees are significantly higher than the rest of the UK. All EAs have to commission a HIP from one of several HIP provider companies that have been established for this purpose. Most will ask the client to pay upfront or account for it from the sale proceeds by way of some defered payment scheme. The principle of NO SALE NO FEE will be consigned to the history books with most EAs imposing a "Stop Gap" date into their contracts to the effect that the seller is liable for the cost of the pack after x period regardless of whether he sells, withdraws or boils his head. More likely sellers will put more pressure on EAs to sell their houses which can only help to reward good , proactive, well run agencies at the expense of the weaker players who will go out of business under pressure of significantly lower prices and volumes. A good agent will take his clients position into account before recommending a price reduction. If the seller has a genuine real life consequence for not selling, then you ask the client to carefully consider his opportunity cost of not selling. Set in this context, an agressive price reduction may well be the best course of action. Take 10% hit now to avoid a 20% hit later. If on the other hand you are a "kite Flyer" or preferential seller then you can afford to wait until hell freezes over to get your price, which you will nearly always do if you are prepared to wait or live long enough.

Nope they are not. You would be surprised how much of an average EAs stock is made up of such "kite fliers" or preferential sellers. As an EA, you either walk away from these people or agree to "test the market" at the vendors optimistic price, hoping that the vendors motivation will improve if you can find them the home of their dreams when they will drop their price to a sensible level in order to sell. In a rising market you do the latter, in a falling market you do the former. As the old saying goes, there are only 2 reasons why any property on the market does not sell, either wrong agent/bad marketing or wrong price. Any house is saleable in any market at the right price.

It is true that the value of a HIP to a buyer is considerably diminished after the expiry of the searches included therin. Once HIPS are established later in the year, it will be very interesting to see all the overpriced properties standing out like a sore thumb, since every month that goes by, more properties on say Rightmove will have HIPS linked to them, and the ones that do not have a HIP will by implication have been on the market for ages. This may lead to a market forces led take up of HIPS even from those who have "avoided" paying by marketing their homes before the respective deadlines. Some agencies are actually having some success with the strategy of pushing the now optional Home Condition report as a means of achieving higher prices for their clients. The idea is that a seller who is prepared to commision an optional HCR as part of their HIP has nothing to hide and will gain an advantage in interest which will lead to a higher price being achieved which will more than cover the extra cost. Again this will lead to a market forces led takeup of the optional HCR element of the HIP if this idea proves successful in practise. This might be extremely viable if the current slowdown turns into a full blown buyers market. Which vendor would you trust, the one with the HCR made freely available or the one who says buyer beware? Most large Corporate EAs will offer a "defered payment" scheme for a nominal sum extra, meaning the cost of the HIP can be taken from the sale proceeds avoiding any up front cost liability. Not sure about the smaller independent agent however, although the smarter ones are well prepared by now. Mortgagees in Possession will have to pay for the cost of the HIP, sadly it will just be added to defaulting borrowers arrears account with interest accruing of course.

A very reasonable assertion imho.

The market is already correcting downward outside of London and has been for the last 6 weeks or so but is definitely not crashing unless you define a modest fall in prices as a "crash". It will not crash unless there is a significant "trigger event" that is so profound that it negatively effects buying sentiment simultaneously among large numbers of existing buyers. Ask yourself at what point would you either pull out or try to renegotiate the price of your current house purchase due to concerns that you were paying too much in a falling market? When we reach that point the cycle, then we will be getting close to crash conditions. Without some sort of afementioned trigger, current buying sentiment is still a long way from this point today although the tide is starting to turn. The 1988 crash was defined by the fact that there was an arbitary deadline set by the government in advance which basically said we will withdraw a significant tax advantage (double Miras) unless you buy a house before this date. Unbelievably irresponsible with hindsight. People rushed to beat the deadline causing an extreme sellers market with peak prices being achieved, but once the deadline passed very large numbers of existing buyers simultaneously decided that they could not afford/no longer wished to buy and withdrew from their purchases. What happened to all of these properties? Of course they were nearly all dumped back onto the market in a very short timescale changing conditions from an extreme sellers market to a buyers market virtually overnight. What is happening at the moment is a downturn in buying enquiries leading to a modest drop in sales but it is far from a crash at the moment. Most EA offices are indeed very quiet but it is the height of the holiday season. Today we had 3 enquiries in an 8 hour working day but 2 of them had offers accepted. People are still buying out there. The acid test for the market will be the autumn IMHO. More likely scenario is that this downturn will pick up in momentum, quite slowly at first but then gathering pace exponentially in inverse proportion to loss of buying confidence. Do not completely rule out the idea of a economically suicidal but politically expediant rate cut as a precursor to a snap autumnal General Election which would have the effect of shoring up buying confidence in the very short term and reducing the momentum of the downturn.

Again it depends on the sellers motivation but if they really want to sell then definitely put in an offer of what you think it is worth to you. When you visit these places, find out by subtle questioning whether the seller is one of "necessity" or "preference". By this I mean is there some third party factor forcing a move such as job relocation, relationship split, baby on the way etc. You have very little chance of persuading a preferential seller to take 250K on 275K since they have no consequence for not selling, but a seller of necessity will probably give it some serious consideration and so should their agent particularly if they have been on the market for 4 months. Do not rely on the agents rationale for the sellers motivation, find this out for yourself. We the agents are paid to represent the seller to get the best possible price and should not be giving away personal information that weakens our clients negotiating position.

Yes the Peak Oil scenario is very frightening and makes worrying about house prices seem trivial by comparison. However, the man on the street feels powerless to do anything it at the individual level and does not seem to be able/willing to engage with the serious implications for our way of life over time or succeed in getting it discussed at national debating level. One way to do this is to ask people what level of petrol prices would make them actually ration their driving behavior. At the moment, I think it is fair to say that most people will cut back on other things but still fill the car up if the price goes a little higher. Most people will also intuitively accept that the world does not have an unlimited supply of oil and that as we use it up the price of the remaining supplies will rise. But what about £1.50 per litre, £2 per litre or £5 per litre? Different people will give you different answers depending upon their means to pay these higher prices but for all of us at some pricing point we have to actually stop using the car and consider alternatives. Once people give you a price that would make them stop using the car, the next question should be in what year do you expect petrol prices to reach your stated price and note their reply. The last thing to do is to put their stated price into the Peak oil future trend line for oil price and compare their stated year to the likely predicted year for that price. People engage very quickly with the debate after this little exercise because although it is grossly simplified (it is not just petrol that goes up in price isolation of course) , it does make you at least think about it on a practical level.

That depends entirely on their personal circumstances. If they have an urgent need to sell quickly or are under financial pressure then I will politely request them to seriously consider their personal opportunity costs of not selling (say six months more mortgage payments at maybe £1000 per month) and evaluate the offer in this context. If there is no urgent need to sell , or the move is preferential in basis then the advice has to be to hold out for a better offer at the moment but reduce their asking price by 5-10% to ensure a sale is agreed before the anticipated calvalry charge gains in momentum.

The slowdown in buying enquiries has been noticeable since the last rate rise running so close into the nomally slower prime holiday season. Sales are correspondingly down, but not as much as you would think since there are still just enough buyers out there to support the market which is being held up by paucity of supply rather than overwelming demand. The analogy posted elsewhere on the forum of a ball that has been fired upward to the point where it is momentarily motionless before descent seems to describe the market very well to me. As pointed out elsewhere, the key to this is sentiment. As part of my job, as all agents , I undertake "valuations" to pitch for business in a competitive situation, usually where a potential seller calls out 3 or more rivals to compare to me. Part of my presentation has always been to ask them how they see the market, a nice open question without bias to which I listen very carefully to their answer. At the start of the year, probably 95% would say that the market is very strong and they expect prices to keep on rising in 2007. In the last 2 months, asking exactly the same question gets a positive response around 50% of the time, with a smaller number (around 10%) expressing quite a strong view that a downside is on its way. I have always won a lot of business in the past due to giving honest advice backed up by a very strong evidence based valuation model. In fact I believe strongly that one of the key definitions of professionalism is the ability to put the interests of your client above those of yourself. This approach seems to be paying off at the moment since those agents that continue to blindly talk up the market are starting to lose their credibility with around half of potential sellers. There are still however some sellers who will take the highest valuation despite being suppied with a lot of objective data supporting a considerably lower figure in many cases. The killer blow for all estate agencies is when buying sentiment tips too far to the negative and starts to hit the existing sales pipeline. Collegues who worked at the point of the last crash after the abritary withdrawal of double Miras said that their whole pipelines (sales already agreed that are going through on which they duly hope to be paid) virtually got wiped out overnight as droves of buyers simultaneously pulled out of their purchases because they did not want to/ could not afford to buy once the tax incentive was lost. These properties were then all dumped back onto the market at once thus turning it from a sellers market to a buyers market overnight starting the vicious circle and the rest is history as they say. To put this in perpective to todays market, I lost 1 sale last month due to this reason and I have another one this month that looks as if the buyer is having cold feet due to the market rather than any defect/problem with the property. Still not market breaking numbers. I could probably save the deal with an astute renegotiation but the vendor is still very bullish so this cause of action would probably lose me the instruction at this stage in the cycle. Since there is a lack of a "trigger event" this time I feel it extremely unlikely that a sudden crash will occur, more like a gentle deflation that gathers momentum as the pendulum swings and the number of buyers who withdraw rises exponentially in direct proportion to loss of confidence.