Are there any offline agents left out there?

When I talk about House Revolution being an online estate agent, this can be perceived as a negative thing, but the reality is that, whether they like it or not, most estate agents in the land are now online agents.

Why do I say that? Well, as we’ve said many times before, more than 80% of property searches now begin online and 90% of those are on Rightmove. Therefore one of the key selection criteria when choosing your estate agent is do they list their properties on Rightmove?

Rightmove is the biggest online property portal in the UK. Estate agents normally list all their properties there, whereas only a select few ever make it into their shop window or the newspaper, hence my suggestion that every agent is effectively primarily marketing their property online.

If you think about it Rightmove is a supermarket providing the shelf space to buyers. Estate agents supply the goods, like tins of beans on a shelf. The question is, how much should you have to pay to put your own tin of beans onto Rightmove’s shelves? We do it successfully £999+ VAT so why pay more?

The future of estate agency is undoubtedly online, hence the recent announcement by the UK’s largest independent high street estate agent chain, Spicer Haart, that they are launching an online service in association with Tesco.

Online shouldn’t miss out the face to face service though. At House Revolution we have trained and skill negotiators that also visit every property, take photos, prepare your property details, handle your viewings. Everything else a ‘traditional agent’ normally does.