70% of Property Vendors prefer Traditional Agencies over Self-Service Websites

A recent survey of more than 14,000 home vendors has revealed that 70% of customers looking to sell their properties are still choosing to work with traditional estate agencies, instead of turning to self-service websites to cut costs. The “Home Moving Trends Survey” is apparently one of the biggest of its kind, and was undertaken by Property Academy.

A Professional Service is valued considerably more than cost savings

The survey has shown that even though the many choices of cut-price websites for selling your own home claim to be quick and easy, they’re still not appealing to vendors. What vendors are really looking for when they sell their homes is a professional service from local experts whom are easy to deal with and can be visited, if necessary. It seems that the convenience of popping in to a local estate agency is still valued more than being able to self-serve online, and that customers prefer the option to meet their estate agent face to face. Even though a third of the vendors surveyed didn’t actually need to visit their agent throughout the sale of their property, it seems just having the option there if it’s needed feels more comfortable to many. 

We completely agree, which is why we have four offices conveniently situated across the areas that we serve, and welcome our customers to call or visit us throughout the day. This doesn’t just apply to vendors; potential buyers can pop in too, which helps them to get to know us and to build trust before they even view your property, and trust can be a contributing factor in purchase decisions – after all, one of the key rules of sales is that people buy from people they like. Buyers will feel more comfortable if they’ve been able to develop a good relationship with the vendor’s agents.

Furthermore, if a buyer is yet to sell their property, and is so comfortable with the vendor’s agent that they choose to sell through the same agency, this helps to ensure there is good communication throughout the chain. 

Local Knowledge is what sells homes 

When it comes to local knowledge, our team members all live locally to the areas that we service, which collectively gives us an excellent understanding of the local property market and of course the lifestyle that’s on offer in each of our local areas. Our passion for our local area really shines through when we’re discussing properties with potential buyers, no matter what the property type and we have been highly commended in local business awards in the Professional Services category for the way we support our customers and clients. This isn’t something that can be replicated online. There are limits to what can be captured in video, text and photos and particularly if costs are being kept to a minimum.  If someone has a quick question about a property placed with a purely online agency, often there’s no one to call quickly who can give a straight forward answer because the call centre team are likely to be dealing with a huge volume of properties that they won’t have visited.

When potential buyers call about our properties, at least one of the team will have visited and will be able to provide detail in a timely manner. And when it comes to viewings, that’s when our local knowledge really adds value to aid a sale. For example, ask one of our team a question during a viewing and they’ll be able to give you their own personal recommendations about the area such as the best places to park, where to get a curry from and so on. 38% of the people asked in the Home Moving Trends Survey said that this kind of local knowledge was very important to them when they chose who should sell their home.

If you would like to know more about how our residential sales process and prices compare with online self-service websites, our Residential Team will be delighted to tell you more about Oakley Property so do get in touch.