Can anyone accurately define the present function and purpose of the modern-day estate agent?
Can you go further and define what the precise function and purpose of a modern-day estate agency should be?
We’re also hoping to hear from people who can re-define what they really want from estate agents, including things they could to do better:
Current Definition:
A person (or organisation) that tries to get the best possible price for a house whilst acting on behalf of a property owner, usually rewarding themselves with a percentage of the price they manage to achieve on the legal completion of each sale.
Problems resulting:
This basic remit permits them to do almost anything, even if it happens to be somewhat beyond the law, and/or against the economic trends of the market itself. For example, they may take bids from gazumpers (real or imagined), obtain extra mortgage finance for a buyer as a condition of finding a property at the named price, or just pretend additional offers are being made at any stage when in fact, these are fictitious. They may also fail to take the current poor condition of the property into account and they may even misrepresent the true state of the property market itself, not only to prospective sellers simply in order to gain the initial selling instructions but also ‘guild the lily’ as to the present state of the property market to prospective buyers at the same time!
An analogy intended to help highlights these defects:
If you were to eat or drink more than your body can comfortably handle the result would be, to start putting your own body in peril.
In just the same way, if a house owner (or indeed his agent) should try (through nefarious means) to extract more than the current market value of a property from buyers, he is by doing this, putting the operation of the whole marketplace in peril. He is thereby not acting in his client’s best interests at all! This seems to be what has been happening recently. This behaviour no longer relates to the role for which estate agents were originally conceived.
Alternative and new proposal:
New and improved estate agencies should be set up and named ‘Registered House Agents’ or ‘RHAs’ for clarity.
Their job:
A person (or organisation) whose primary function is to locate and assess suitable properties, establishing their true value in the present market conditions. Their instruction would be to act primarily for the buyer, not only in the capacity of finding and presenting to them the best choices of property to purchase for their specific purposes but also to engineer the best overall sale and purchase package for their client. Once formally instructed to, they would see the agreed package right through to combined legal completions.
Since these more modern agents or ‘RHAs’ knew they would have to demonstrate each client that their’s was the best set of proposals for that client in the present market situation, they would automatically be seen to be earning the level of fee that they would expect to be charging for that service.
This would mean that less external regulation for agents would thus be needed, not more!
My new proposal is to improve the way all housing in England and Wales is marketed and is based on moving away from vendor-centric estate agencies. Instead it would use buyer-oriented ones as is fully described in The House Price Solution. This would not cost very much to implement and would bring massive benefits to all local marketplaces.
What do you think about this idea for drastically improving the operation of all housing markets potentially across the whole of Britain?
Constructive comments are very much welcomed.