Seller search interest for high street estate agents has dropped, while there has been a significant increase in searches for ‘cheap fee agents’, new research shows.
- Study notes a spike of 53% increase in searches over the past 12 months for ‘cheap estate agent’
- Searches for ‘high street estate agent’ fell by 45%
- ‘Best estate agent’ were up 27% and ‘local estate agent’ up 12%
- The increasing searches for budget agents shows how sellers are looking to save amidst the increasing cost of living, however this may not always be the best way to move forward as the level of service expected may not be present.
- The best agent and the cheapest agents are rarely the same and you may find you could be losing out in terms of sale price and time to sale agreed.
Estate agent comparison site, GetAgent.co.uk, analysed data from Google Trends over 12 month period (January 2023 to January 2024) for a number of home seller and estate agency related search terms to reveal how seller interest has changed in the current market versus this time last year based on the change in the average search term popularity score.
The study found that there has been a notable year on year spike in search interest for the term ‘cheap estate agent’ within the estate agency category – up 53% between January 2023 and January 2024.
At the same time, search interest for ‘high street estate agent’ is the only search term analysed by GetAgent to have seen a reduction, down -45% annually. Although the search terms ‘best estate agent’ (+27%) and ‘local estate agent’ (+12%) have seen an increase.
The co-founder and CEO of GetAgent.co.uk, Colby Short, is warning agents against dropping their fees in order to attract business and bolster their for sale stock levels while market conditions remain somewhat subdued.
Keen to get agents on side, he says that a race to the bottom does not work, as documented by the sharp rise and even sharper fall of the low cost, fixed-fee agency model.
He commented: “In a time when selling a property is particularly tough, it’s more important than ever for vendors to instruct the very best agent they can find, but more and more vendors are searching for a cheap agent. Whilst this approach is wrong it is understandable why many vendors are making this mistake. To the untrained eye estate agents are a commodity. They often look the same, say the same things and all bring a Rightmove report “proving” they are the best.
“Yet agents are not a commodity. Some are much better than others and a good one can get you a price for your home that will far outweigh the additional fee they charge you whilst also providing great support through an extremely stressful process. It is vital to our industry that we all continue to make this point and hopefully we will see “best estate agent” searches surge next year.”
GetAgent, which charges agents to list with their platform, came under attack two years ago when it advised potential vendors to “lie” to estate agents in a bid to drive down commission fees.
Short later apologised in an open letter for what he saw as an “error” and accepted that GetAgent’s ill thought-out “call their bluff” advice “disappointed the agent community”.
You will often find that you get what you pay for and paying agents upfront or going for an agent that has a fixed or low fee will often also include a poor service; where they are simply working on scaling numbers rather than service. The best agent and the cheapest agents are rarely the same and you may find you could be losing out in terms of sale price and time to sale agreed.
