It's a new (to us, anyway) and interesting web service for estate agents to keep a track on their market share and performance in a specific postcode, or to help the rest of us choose a dominant and high-performing agent. Register (free), stick a (full) postcode into PropertySleuth and you'll be rewarded with a colourful graph showing agent market share. The data can be drilled down to specific property types, and will show new instructions, price reductions, conversion rates and more. I've found a few teething troubles (plenty of "sorry, no data to display") and if you've a choice of Safari and Firefox on a Mac, I'd definitely point you toward Firefox (I'm not getting the buttons on the left to work on Safari)... but there's time for improvement. The idea's good, and the design's solid.
Because there are mixed messages in the press today. According to the National Association of Estate Agents, Santa never came, and sales per agent fell from 7.6 in November to 4.9 in December. Ah... says the tax man... sales agreed may have been down, but completions were at a two-year high, numbering 104,000, the first time the 100,000 mark has been surpassed since December 2007, and up from 41,000 at the January 2009 trough.
An estate agency in Dorset has spent more than a year defending themselves from an unfair dismissal case after asking an agency manager to leave because they'd discovered evidence of hours of porn-surfing and online gambling on his computer.
The NAEA is currently setting up a helpline for anyone who bought a house in the Lilliput area about two years ago and fear they might have shaken that hand.
Rumours of debt problems have been circulating for more than a year. Somewhere in the deal is a loan - directly from Jon Hunt - which will be written off. Hunt, of course, sold the estate agency right at the peak of the property market. The FT is first with the story. Read it here.
It's a £4,000 pound fine, courtesy of Highbury Magistrates' Court, after Foxtons apparently failed to tell a potential residential buyer that a Hackney property was designated work/live. The buyer only found out at a late stage, and was forced to pull out of the sale after spending £600. More here.
It was more than a year ago when the story first leaked out of Barry McKay's spat with Savills. They'd sold his Sunningdale home for £2.9m... something, you'd think, a client would be pleased about. But they'd sold it to the wrong person. The story's back in the news after Savills have settled out of court with McKay, apologising for hiding the identity of the buyer (who had "history" with McKay and wasn't on his suitable buyer list) and not revealing the fact that the buyer was close to getting planning permission to demolish and rebuild on the plot... raising the perceived value of the property to something closer to £10m. More here.
This Is Money sees Foxtons's overdue accounts as a cause for concern. Accounts were apparently due at the end of October, and haven't been filed. More here.
The Office of Fair Trading has published its Home Buying And Selling Market Study, a substantial project. Estate agents who took part in its questionnaire - or anybody about to move and wondering what to expect from the average UK agent - might like to go here and download the Estate Agency survey... an interesting snapshot of what they do and how.
Because the west London agency won the Supreme Negotiator Award last night, beating Marsh & Parsons and Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward into second and third place.
Ed Mead didn't cry while making an acceptance speech. The awards night took place at the Hilton, and guests were entertained by magician and comedian Paul Zenon, who made Foxtons disappear.
According to the National Association of Estate Agents, who only ever get it right and tell the truth, an average of five homebuyers were chasing each and every property on their books in October. But, and it's a big but, sales were down from 8.5 per agent in September to 7.7. Worryingly, too, the number of new buyers coming onto the market was slightly down. Agents need buyers. And buyers need lending. Could be worse though. In fact, it hasbeen.
For the long catch-up, including the spat with Rightmove and Brightsale, go here. The short version... Tesco managed to make a total, copper-bottomed cock-up of entering the property listings industry in 2007. In 2008, the man who said this:
... decided he hated the Tesco Property Market so much, he bought the company. And now - according to this - Tesco Property Market might do like Arnie and be back as soon as January, under the codename Indigo, perhaps because they've been feeling blue.
The Sun takes estate agents Geering & Colyer to task after a reader turned up to look at a fisherman's cottage in, err, Dungeness and was shocked to find two large nuclear power stations clearly within view. (I know... only a Sun reader would turn up in a place called Dungeness and be surprised to find a little nuclear industry activity.) What the reader/newspaper resents, it appears, is that G&C took photos that didn't show the power stations in the background. But just, for a moment, imagine if they had. Imagine being the vendor. It would feel like sabotage. Mocked if they do, mocked if they don't. Perhaps a discreet mention would have been wise. Within easy reach of...convenient for... or something. Read it, here. Particulars, here.
We'd be interested to hear from a spokesperson for Wow Property, whom we wrote about back here. They appear to have - er - vanished, although their listings remain on major portals. We're just wondering, because... well... this:
Mischief? Or what? Feel free to use us to put the record straight.
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors disagreed, but didn't impose a fine. J-S&S had already paid the couple £5,000 in an out-of-court settlement, and given its staff a little "training" in how not to mock people for their sexual orientation (because, you know, that's really difficult, right?). We're just relieved J-S&S didn't try to argue that the whole things was an unfortunate coincidence, that lesbians just happened to be the random reference code.
EstateAgentToday draws our attention to Forsaken, writer Helen Davis' play at Particular Theatre Company in Exeter. The story... a nun, charged with selling the Abbey, attracts the attentions (and we're not talking about selling her a HIP) of her estate agent, who also happens to be gay. Saturday's the last night, tickets here.
"in principle", they want the Property Ombudsman to be more open, naming estate and letting agents who have had complaints upheld against them. He's careful - quoted here - to make it clear that Which? isn't demanding it, they'd merely support it were it proposed by the Ombudsman.
Remember this... the Which? report that condemned estate agents for charging too much for HIPs? It got a lot of press attention, and seemed to suggest agents were cynically ripping off the public, an idea that obviously shocked everybody. Now, the agents are hitting back. A piece in Estate Agency News gives voice to agents who claim that the Which? comparisons weren't like-for-like... that agents (who apparently share a legal responsibility to have a proper HIP in place before marketing a property... although I'm surprised the vendor-agent contract doesn't shift any repercussion to the vendor) provide a more thorough HIP apparently. Some of the cheaper HIPs come with expensive conveyancing attached, too. If you're an independent HIP provider, we'd love to hear your thoughts.
The apparent up-turn in - at least - interest in residential property seems to be feeding through to the portals. Or is it that old-fashioned foot traffic to estate agents has just, finally, ended?
"Funny" Somerset estate agent Jules Bending's apparently going into the obsolete light bulb business, and admits he's been stockpiling traditional hundred watters in a farmer's shed in the Mendip Hills, in readiness for the ban. Guardian readers are apparently furious. One property blogger feels slightly queasy. Ah... the West Country, where estate agent-sponsored mud wrestling is considered good publicity, and sticking light bulbs in a shed is entrepreneurship.
He's Jon Hunt, and his former company is, of course, Foxtons. He believes property prices in London have bottomed out. He denies speculation that he might be about to buy back Foxtons.
It all started here... a Time magazine article about the state of the country's number one casino town. The author meets Brooke Boemio, "a bouncy, sweet, recently remarried 31-year-old mom whom I met years ago when I was on another assignment. Boemio is doing great during this recession. In fact, she's never had a job that paid as well: she made more than $100,000 last year. Even better, she's willing to show me how messed up the real estate scene is."
How messed up? Messed up enough for this:
Basically, she finds clients who owe more on their house than the house is worth (and that's about 60% of homeowners in Las Vegas) and sells them a new house similar to the one they've been living in at half the price they paid for their old house. Then she tells them to stop paying the mortgage on their old place until the bank becomes so fed up that it's willing to let the owner sell the house at a huge loss rather than dragging everyone through foreclosure. Since that takes about nine months, many of the owners even rent out their old house in the interim, pocketing a profit.
Boemio even admits to doing it herself. And, before parting company with the journalist, shows him how to break into a random empty house... a scene which was, apparently, accompanied by a short piece of film (now removed). All-in-all... not, you'd think, a way of ingratiating yourself on your employers. And you'd think right. Boemio is now - according to this - without a job. What amazes me, though, is that somebody without the gumption to realise that advertising your breaking-and-entering and fraud skills in Time might get you into at least one kind of trouble still has enough gumption to defraud the US banking system. No wonder we're all where we are.
Mud's flying over here... a prospective buyer is accusing a Foxtons agent of bullying her by refusing to show her a Richmond property after she apparently refused mortgage advice from sister-company Alexander Hall. Foxtons have responded, claiming a misunderstanding... suggesting the agent was merely trying to ascertain whether the buyer really had finance in place. Obviously, without full details, it's impossible to know what actually happened, but there's clearly room for dysfunction. On the one hand, Foxtons (fairly or unfairly) has a reputation for aggressive tactics, and the aggressive selling of AH services in particular, so it's understandable that someone might become a little defensive when the whole subject comes even before a viewing. On the other, I wish more agents were a little more aggressive about vetting prospective buyers, rather than simply notching up viewings on a quantity, not quality, basis. With loan criteria tougher than ever, this aspect of an agent's job has never been more important.
Congrats to Douglas & Gordon, who apparently has just enjoyed its second most profitable month of business since the market's 2007 peak ("in terms of buyers registering and sales agreed"... we wonder, a little, about the first, but won't argue that it doesn't count for something). D&G (this D&G, not this one) apparently forged 100 deals last month... just 10% off July 2007 levels.
A couple of months ago we were the victim of an attempted knuckle-rapping by a Somerset estate agent who couldn't understand why we failed to laugh at his jokes. It must be because we're keeping our sponsors happy, he suggested. Comedy's in the ear of the beholder, we replied. According to Estate Agent Today, he's tried to be funny again, this time with a mailshot.
Apparently, recipients have been queuing up to complain. I suspect Bending's view is... bad publicity's better than no publicity. And it's certainly true, you've all heard of him now. I'm not sure the fart card would be the detail to inspire me to list a property with him, though; but - as I initially said - it's all in the ear of the beholder.
According to the National Association of Estate Agents, the difference between what vendors want and what they get was down to just 1.9% in June, down from 6.3% in May. Agents are still selling, on average, just ten homes a month... but it seems a lack of supply is supporting prices. However, what this suggests is that with unemployment still likely to rise and mortgages scarce, all it will take is a increase in homes for sale for prices to topple once again.
As some of you may know, this has been going on for some time. Foxtons and the Office of Fair Trading have been locking horns in the Court of Appeal regarding Foxton's T&Cs. Was it fair that they should charge landlords commissions when tenants decide to renew contracts, even though they've done no extra work? Was it fair they sales commission if a tenant decides to buy the property, even if they didn't formally introduce it as a potential sale? Other lettings agents have been watching the case closely, concerned that a precedent would cost them dearly in a renewal fees... because everybody does it. Finally... a judgement. No, Foxton's T&Cs weren't fair. But not due to their content, due to their wording. They simply weren't clear enough. Is charging commission on renewals unfair in itself? No. So there you have it. Everybody's a winnerloserwinnerloser whatever.
Shadow housing minister Grant Shapps met the National Association of Estate Agents' Peter Bolton King and Gary Smith and told them... yes, we'll ditch the HIP; no, we won't make the licensing of estate agents compulsory under current circumstances; should those circumstances change we'll consider only a "light touch" approach. The big question... after they'd shaken hands with Shapps, said goodbye and left the building, did King and Smith high five? Who knows... but when will Shapps learn about negotiating with estate agents? More here.
Actually, it makes for pretty grim reading... page upon page of "offences involving fraud and other dishonesty within the meaning of section 3(1)(a)(i) of the Estate Agents Act 1979 (the Act)"; one agent was even - grab your braces - "convicted on 22 March 1989 at Norwich Crown Court of Murder, this being an offence involving violence within the meaning of section 3(1) (a) (i) of the Estate Agents Act 1979 (the Act)". That's taking your job a bit seriously, isn't it?
It's compulsive reading, and it's yours, here. But rememer, do sleep well and don't have nightmares, the number of agents scarlet lettered by OFT is small in the context of the number working on a single high street near you. I think that's comforting.
It's always nice, watching the young fledglings learning to tie their big tie knots, steering their Minis into the big bad property world for the first time...
Isn't this one of the perks of being an estate agent? You've taken your exciting new girlfriend out to dinner, and just got the cheque (okay, in the current climate, you've split it), or you've been out on the razz with a few mates and the pub's kicked you out... where now? Back to your own flat? Or off to an expensive, nicely "staged" for selling, party pad, the owners abroad, the keys in your pocket? Hmmm. Joseph Young, of Vickery and Co estate agents (apparently, he had already handed in his notice), chose to party.
You can appreciate why he didn't want to bring his mates home. They went on to "borrow" the vendor's car, which they smashed into a tree, writing it off. The agency did - however - manage to sell the house two months later. Result.
More data by National Association of Estate Agents property portal PropertyLive... this time showing that almost seven in ten wannabe first-time buyers have given up hope about being able to afford to step onto the property ladder. Eagle-eyed readers (and sub-editors) will have spotted that if they've given up hope, they can't be wannabe ftbs... but we know what they mean. NAEA-sponsored... the data appears to be directed toward the Government... a disguised call for help in loosening lending criteria.
First it was the case of the impotent Mortgage Rescue Scheme, now - it seems - the Government's shared ownership project - MyChoiceHomeBuy - isn't living up to its promise. Estate Agent Today claims to have been receiving emails from estate agents unhappy (understatement) about collapsing chains... chains built on MyChoiceHomeBuy. The scheme was aimed at key worker first-time buyers, and promised up to 50% of purchase price. Except now, there's apparently no cash in the bank...
And this looks like an experience common across the country. Do the maths, factor in the chains, and it's a lot of unhappy potential movers, lost revenue for agents, wasted money for movers. Another case of the Government's unique definition of "help"?
According to Ombudsman data, complaints against estate agents are down 38% in the first quarter of 2009, compared to the last quarter of 2008. It's a sizable drop... but then, there's been a sizable drop in the number of estate agents, the the number of opportunities they have to get out and meet the public. Interestingly, that didn't stop them offending people last year, during the early days of the crash. 2008 saw a 60% drop in sales, but only a 3% drop on complaints, year-on-year.
Except, I suppose, you spotted the beams. Anyway, I'm not so sure the market's in a de-cluttering, house-staging, bread-baking place right now... it's surely all about price?
The Guardian blog admonishes the portals for sense of humour failure, but I'm not so sure this comedy car-crash offers much to laugh at. Stick to selling houses... leave the jokes to the professionals.
Congratulations to Colliers Wood-based Samuel Estates, who've been nominated in the best small business category in the ironically-named RBS South London Business Awards. They'll be battling out with a plastic tableware manufacturer and a corporate event light show company in the finals. More here. Meanwhile... not so hot... Executive Estates' Marcia Whyte has been struck off by the Office of Fair Trading, after it emerged that she'd failed to inform a client that the buyer was, in fact, ahem, her. She stood to make a £65,000 killing. More here. The ugly? The Apprentice's estate agent contender Philip Taylor is shaping up to be such a tosser that PropertyTalkLive are daring to ask: Does Apprentice star Philip give estate agents a bad name?
Yeah, like estate agents pay their license fees. (A joke... okay?!) Here's a link to the show... and notice that it's Axe The Agent?, rather than Axe The Agent. What a difference a question mark makes. Or doesn't.
Some of you may remember... Foxtons and the Office of Fair Trading are locked in dispute over a clause in the Foxtons letting contract (and - to be fair - just about every other lettings agents' contracts, too) demanding landlords pay a new commission to agents even when existing tenants simply renew. There's already been a little action, resulting in a Court of Appeal judgement that the final decision will apply to existing contracts as well as future ones. Now, we've a date for the final showdown... April 27. It will be interesting... a contentious issue with good arguments on both sides, and the potential to seriously affect agents all over London.
I know... to a lot of people, this is going to sound a bit like one of those "who lands first?" jokes. Or the discovery that traffic wardens really loathe tax inspectors. Nevertheless, according to the Times' legal editor:
Their complaint - which, let's face it, comes at a great time for estate agents - is that estate agents' fees "dwarf" solicitors' fees during a property transaction, and are out of proportion with what they actually achieve. The Law Society is taking the complaint to the Office of Fair Trading. Now, far be it for me to wade in here in defence of the Devil, but... lawyers get their fees in any circumstance. Estate agents ask more money when a sale is achieved, because largely they're working for free. No sale, no commission. And while the Law Society campaigns for greater transparency, I hope that includes a close look at exactly what the conveyancing process involves. You won't find it hard to find a a commercial lawyer who, after a few drinks, will explain to you where conveyancing rests in the professional hierarchy. I don't want to be rude or anything, but you don't need to be Petrocelli to perform a search. Are our conveyancers really worth what they're paid? Furthermore, recent customer satisfaction surveys conducted after property exchanges suggest we've an issue with the speed and competence of our solicitors, who regularly rank below agents.
Enquiries are on the rise, that's been shown statistically and there's anecdotal evidence from just about every estate agent I talk to. The problem is... they're not buying. According to this morning's Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors data, while enquiries rose in February at their fastest since the frenzy of August 2006, sales volume has hit a new record low... each agent agreeing 9.5 sales in the three months to the end of February. In London, the figure was worse... less than an exchange a fortnight. But is this the low point... after which those enquiries will start converting into sales? Does that depend on the lenders? Partly. It also depends on the jobs market. Watch this space.
Here's an interesting new franchise launch. The Homebuyers Agency is based on the belief that a purchase is far riskier than a sale, and yet buyers operate in the market without experts on their side. (I'm not sure I buy this, personally. Sure, the vendor gets the estate agent. But the buyer gets the surveyor and the solicitor.) It's also based on the belief that a buyer registered with an estate agent has access only to a small proportion of the homes on the market, whereas a professional homefinder can access the entire spread. (Again, apart from non-advertised properties - which are unlikely to be the type you can pick up at a discount - aren't most properties somewhereontheweb?) What the professional homebuyer can do, though, is hold your hand throughout the process and help you negotiate the best possible discount. The other interesting USP is this:
Should you require a mortgage, life insurance, home/contents insurance, conveyancing services, utilities, etc, your Homebuyers’ Agent will rebate 100% of any commissions received from the sale of these services directly to you, for life! This often amounts to thousands of pounds credited back to you.
That's nice. This is fairly radical, too:
Fees are charged as a proportion of the amount saved off the asking price, with a minimum 1.5% fee.
Homebuyers is looking for experienced estate agents in 400 areas to take on the business on a franchise basis, with franchisees getting 50% of commission. According to this, four have gone in a month. Presumably, the agents behind the Homebuyers Agency are using the downturn to recruit and get in on the ground, so that they'll be well-positioned when the market turns, and will be there to hold buyers hands as/if the sector heats up and the threat of gazumping returns.
It's perhaps not the response we were expecting to yesterday's rate cut. The agents aren't happy. In fact, according to Estate Agent Today, they feel cheapened:
So which bit of that don't we agree with? We agree with all of it. We're just impressed that such long-term common sense is coming from a profession so squeezed by a lack of volume. Click the link for plenty of comments.
I like the Marsh&Parsons web design. I like the way the area guides respond to a click. I like the red/brown colours. Now, they're offering video particulars, too. Here's the first; what do you think? I say... top marks for simplicity, and thank God... no Alan Partridge voiceover.
A report, today, by the E-Homebuying Forum suggests merging conveyancing lawyers and estate agents into one single concentrated disliked profession. Its "Blueprint for the Future of Homebuying" seeks "Faster Certainty" in the homebuying process, by a combination of "Greater Transparency", "Greater Efficiency" and "Greater Commitment". Other specific suggestions include estate agency regulation, wider use of automated and electronic systems across the process and legally-binding pre-contracts with financial penalties. We like the last bit, but we're worried about the first. Estate agents are employed by the vendor, and their job is to sell a property. Lawyers are employed by the buyer, and part of their job is to warn the buyer why - on occasion - he shouldn't buy the property. You can read the document here.
Moneywise investigates, and discovers you'd do well to find the 1% or 1.5% commission rate you might have found a couple of years ago. Now, think 2% or 3%. Also, they suggest there's a growing trend in which agents charge a fixed fee based on a percentage of asking price, and stick to it even if the property sells for considerably less. I wouldn't complain too much about the former. One and a half per cent is effectively a discounted rate, reflecting ease-of-sale... a gesture that the agent's prepared to play fair, and really wants your property because there's a shortage of stock. Remember, in America, you can expect to pay 6% in commission. The latter, though... that sounds like a case of seller beware.
And I think that's a fair compromise. For now. But - after Mervyn King's assessment of the economy yesterday - how long before it'll be a case of... bring back to rabbits and it's a work day?
But it's not for our money, it's for foreign money, which is worth so much more these days. The agent's Marsh & Parsons, the branch manager will be ex-Chesterton, ex-Foxtons Guy Major, who also wins the Most Masculine Name In London Property Award. More here.
Okay, give me one year's Groucho Club membership, tickets for Rigoletto and an hour with one of your fleet in the UK's most icy car park, and I'll take two.
UK estate agents are apparently averaging four shags a week, twice the national average, and more than any other profession. Okay, it's not like there's much else for them to do, but at least they're not sitting around moping.
Old habits die hard, and it's even harder to wean the British public off their property addiction. I'd heard, anecdotally, from a number of estate agents that January had been something of a good month, but I'd just assumed they were drunk or high or something. But here's the Halifax House Price Index telling us that January prices rose, yes that's rose, on the month, by a matter of 1.9%. A blip? Very possibly... people in the industry are only convinced of a change of direction once the three-month average moves from red to black or vice versa. But now here's the Guardian getting the same story I've been getting... not only that, but gazumping too.
An exhibition of art work by underground graffiti artist Banksy went on display yesterday at... drum roll please... Chesterton's new Sloane Avenue branch. Graffiti and west London estate agency? An odd combination? You bet... but also a clever and forward-thinking market positioning from an agency that dares to be different. The exhibition runs for a month.
It's traditional for Savills to do their MIPIM entertaining on board a well-equipped (read driving range, read cinema) yacht. Not this year, apparently, when credit crunch conditions will bring some of the UK's most upmarket agents ashore. Personally, I'd consider that the final straw. Expect to see the Rat and Mouse continuing to enjoy the life to which it's become accustomed.
She's back from Australia, she's £3m in her pocket, and a dad who's a partner at Behr and Butchoff in St Johns Wood. Dani's looking for a bargain, but her dad - sensibly - has started talking up local market.
Love it. Family's family but property, that's business.
But Dani - who's smarter than the average Behr - doesn't give up that easily. Click here to read more as she looks around one of her father's properties, then brands it "pokey and dated".
Story of the weekend... according to the Observer Foxtons owners BC Partners have been told by creditors to inject £50m into the firm or risk seeing the firm go into administration. It's been clear for some time that Foxtons wasn't going to meet its debt obligations, but - as far as we know - this is the first time anybody's called bust.
Meanwhile, suggestions here that Jon Hunt - who flogged the firm just before the market went tits up - is looking at piling back into property... commercial this time. Every experienced or senior estate agent I've discussed the Foxtons sale with has described Hunt's timing as lucky rather than skillful. But if you believe otherwise, watch commercial closely.
BC Partners paid £390m for the London and Home Counties estate agency chain not more than a slit second before the property market imploded. According to a BC partner - quoted by Bloomberg - they were anticipating a slowdown in volume in the London market... of 30%. No-one was anticipating 70%, and if they had, they might have let Jon Hunt keep the firm.
Connells, the last remaining shareholder of the original Rightmove founders, will be renewing its deal with the portal. Which is a vote of confidence for the troubled Rightmove, sine Connells is a giant collection of agents, including Fox & Sons, Barnard Marcus and Allen & Harris. Less of a vote of confidence is news that it's put its 17% stake in the portal up for auction. I guess liquidity's stretched with volume where it is and - well - £40m could come in handy.
First, it's Hamptons who, in a press release, claim a 22% increase in net sales from October to November. London saw a 12% increase, and a 2% increase on the same period last year. Meanwhile, KFHreport a significant pick-up in London sales in the last few weeks, particular - it appears - in south and south-west London.
Interestingly, Countrywide appears to come clean about motives. The "sale" has been planned for months, and it's apparently more about saving the company, which (according to S&P) was likely to run out of cash before the end of 2009, than the vendors. Still, a sale is a sale, and we're all grown-ups, aren't we?
Profits were up in the financial year to last April, from £64.9m to £67m. Of course, the key phrase, there, is to last April, which was before the credit crunch really began to hit the high end part of the market where KF do their deals. Still, there are bonuses. Forty-six partners, apparently, receiving an average of £780,000 each.
Salah Mussa, Chairman of the Mercantile Group comments: We see these difficult market conditions as an opportunity for the continued development of the Chesterton brand and we believe that Chesterton will thrive and enhance its position in this real estate market. I am very appreciative of all the value that Consensus has added to Chesterton over the years and I look forward to working with them on other endeavours in the future.”
How much? They're not saying. I wonder whether Chesterton still has its in-house historian?
Royal Bank of Scotland borrowers in arrears will now be allowed a six month head start, before the bank sends the repo-men in pursuit. As unemployment inevitably rises, it will be seen as good news by most, and is likely to become a common policy among the lenders. According to the BBC's Robert Peston, it will be seen as less than good news by the estate agents, who have apparently been relying on the disposal of repos as a revenue stream. It's not clear to me how (in reality) a month or two added to the normal period of grace is going to dry up the repo-market. More here.
Read the piece... it's about London agents learning new tricks, including open houses (I know... we saw a few of those during the boom) and stamp duty incentives. I'm sure there are more, though, and I've heard - on the vine - of one London agent who's turned half his office into a coffee shop. Any interesting examples near you? Drop me a line.
Estate agents are selling more homes: one more a week, in fact, at seven each in October. But they've more unsold properties on their books. More here.
It's peak? 80,000 boards a month. And just to show how bad things are, those figures include a 100% increase in demand for to let boards. It sounds like a mixture of estate agencies going down, and estate agents choosing to re-use tatty boards rather than order fresh ones. Good news for trees, though, I guess.
We're hearing - and from more than one source, now - that a leading UK estate agency is asking its partners to stump up a quarter of a million of personal money to keep things liquid. Big cheque, big problem. The name? We're just waiting for the Rat and Mouse legal department to give us clearance...
This, and a new report from the Centre for Economic and Business Research, that predicts as many as 50,000 estate agents could be without a job in the next nine months.
To put this into some kind of perspective, that's 300 a month from peak membership last year of 12,600, survivable – at that rate – for, realistically, how long? Three out of every four had either gone bust or removed because they hadn't kept up with fees. This suddenly makes a lot sense. And yet it seems like only yesterday.
The National Association of Estate Agents is calling on Alistair Darling to announce a complete suspension of stamp duty in his pre-budget report. Will that make more of a difference than cutting the base rate? When people still fear a significant further percentage fall in house prices, will a cut in the cost of moving encourage them to splash out?
It's an online agent known as TheDiscountPropertyShop and according to EstateAgentToday it's shifting properties at four times the national rate, by knocking 10% off the asking price and advertising super-wide.
The agency will deal with serious enquiries only... in other words: no mortgage, no solicitor, no conversation. So what does this mean? Are we 10% off a functioning property market? Or does a functioning estate agent need to be selling 10% below everybody else? It's certainly another win for the online model.
He's said to have nicked more than a million from people in Yorkshire, proving that people in Yorkshire had more than a million and Northern Rock had some serious data processing issues.
It's been around a full week and so far it's managed to find just seven signatures. Perhaps the strength of feeling among estate agents was exaggerated.
Innovative online estate agency Brightsale have announced a new partnership with north-west group Thornley Groves. How's it working? TG buys a 25% stake in Brightsale; Brightsale lists all its 650 properties, bringing its total listings to more than 900 (note that Brightsale isn't a search engine or portal... it's an agency that exists online).
It's an interesting development - you'd think hardly surprising at a time when agents are struggling to cover astronomical, 20th Century costs in a frail 21st Century market. But British estate agency is famously conservative. Watch this space.
A message from the National Association of Estate Agents' Peter Bolton King:
Propertylive.co.uk has already been inundated with enquiries and properties for listing; we anticipate a further upsurge in activity in the coming weeks. I would, however, like to ask that our members remain patient and allow Propertylive.co.uk a few weeks to get up and running. No other property portal has ever attempted to upload such a large number of listings in such a short space of time, therefore we will all see the site evolve substantially over the next few weeks and months.
Breaking early morning news... Rightmove is apparently waving goodbye to 20% of its workforce, as the housing slump bites, and agents get increasingly antsy with listings charges.
Do estate agents have a collective "bluff"? In any case, online agents Brightsale suspect it's being pulled, in a missive to members warning them that if they don't like current listings charges, they'll just have to, well, not like them. Meanwhile, the National Association of Estate Agents' own rival, PropertyLive, is finally available. So far (it's a beta), no mashups (other than a simple map), no fancies, just listings. Not many of those, either, but a pop-up tells us they're feverishly loading properties as we speak and, after all, you have to start somewhere.
A reader Rat and Mouse reader has just received this email from Lauristons in Wimbledon:
We are delighted to announce that for all instructions received before 31st December 2008 Lauristons are offering you the opportunity to sell your property for an unbeatable 0% selling fee. If you are interested or if you know anybody who may be interested in this unique offer please contact Danny Hicks, Sales Manager at your earliest convenience.
Our tipster adds:
What on earth is the thinking behind this? Maybe it's the old "yeah, we're losing money on each customer, but we'll make it up in volume!" approach....
I don't know... maybe it's a questions of dominating the area with boards in preparation of the upturn. Maybe it's about making sure that - if there is a sale - it's theirs.
A Rat and Mouse tipster has forwarded a new message from the NAEA to members. The new portal will, apparently, "be delivered on time at the end of this week". And if it isn't, it will presumably be delivered on time at the end of next week. Interestingly, it's the uptake that has apparently slowed things down, with "2,500 office applications to date". There's a reminder, too, that what we will see at the end of the week is, strictly, a beta. No mention of the pretender.
All our information suggested that today was the day when the National Association of Estate Agents' Rightmove-killer, PropertyLive.co.uk, was due to become functional. As yet - no sign of anything other than a static welcome page... and a bit of visible code on Google:
There is - however - a cheeky pretender, hovering above in the Google Sponsored Links banner - a PropertyLive.me, planning on catching a ride on the NAEA's coattails, perhaps?
It's an odd site... seemingly consisting of a handful of Knight Frank listings, and not much else. Where's the plan?
[thanks to the Rat and Mouse reader who alerted us to this]
you'll need to instruct a solicitor the same day your offer's accepted
your survey will need to happen in seven days
you'll need a written mortgage offer in 14 days
you've 21 days from receipt of contract papers to sign
even after the surveyor's report, don't expect to negotiate
The point, clearly, is to give the vendor a little more power and reduce - if you'll pardon the expression - some of the piss-taking and time-wasting currently in the system. We say... ambitious but laudable.
We don't know how popular PropertyADD is with London's agents, but its claims are impressive... a hosted solution that can be accessed anywhere, on any machine. It sends out automatic property updates to leads via email, SMS or MMS, tracks performance and exports data to the property portals. We're not making any recommendations, but equally we don't feel we'd be doing our duty in this time of need if we didn't let agents know... there's a new free version, a kind of PropertyADD lite, called Match. More here.
The days when estate agents told us everything was okay and the house price turn was merely a media invention are long over. You don't need to look far to find our agents telling it like is. In New York, however, it seems they play by more restrictive rules. Check the fall-out when one agent decides to throw a little skepticism at the idea of a $5m Park Avenue apartment achieving their asking price in the current climate.
Did I say open? Yes, I did. We have it on good authority that Humberts franchise Farleys will be opening a second office, at 60 Sloane Avenue, in November.
This is an extraordinary story in the Times's City Diary. Anybody else would be taking the Savills agents out for a well-earned slap-up lunch after sealing the £2.9m deal. Barry McKay is apparently less than delighted, and accuses Savills of misleading him over the identity of the buyer... a property developer called John Morris, who appears to have some history with Mr McKay.
McKay claims that he explicitly did not want his family home sold to Morris, who now has planning permission to build on it. He says that if he had known the identity of the ultimate owner, he would have demanded a higher price.
The house in question is in Sunningdale... a posh enclave of Berkshire, close to London.
A Savills estate agent has resigned after being discovered descending the stairs of a west country property in the middle of the night. An enquiry was cut short by his resignation, but there's talk of funny business between him and a female colleague.
You're so right, Paris, and the realness and not fakeness starts right here, baby. She says she's looking in St John's Wood. Who knows, perhaps she'll fall in love with a well-mannered, cute-accented St John's Wood estate agent, like James here, buy a house from him, get married, and scatter a little stardust on this havoc-blasted London property market.
The RICS have spoken, and it's bad. Nationally, estate agents made an average of 12.7 sales each in the three months to August. In London, the figure was worse... 9.4 transactions per agent or less than one a week. On the positive side, it's being reported that estate agents are getting really good at sudoku, and totally dominating a number of Nintendo DS titles. Perhaps cheered by this success, they've become (only) slightly less bearish in house price estimations... 81% more Chartered Surveyors reported a fall in house prices, but that's down from 83.1% in July, and it's the fourth consecutive move in the same direction. If you want to download the actual RICS report (in pdf format) click this.
Here's an interesting new service... moveBROKER helps agents squeeze revenue from every client, whether it ends in a sale or not. Through relationships with leading HIPs providers, solicitors, mortgage brokers, removals companies and utility switching services, it operates as a one-stop shop for agents to earn a range of commissions and rebates. There are two membership levels. One's free, the other costs £499, and includes higher rebates and monthly listings on Nestoria.
Energy Performance Certificates were due to be made compulsory on all marketed properties - including those that went on the market before the original HIPs introduction - from the start of October. Some estate agents have been predicting chaos... a swathe of homes without EPCs being withdrawn from the market at the last minute. Here's a Telegraph piece, dated last Saturday, claiming...
Hmm... if you read the piece carefully it's not at all clear that this is the case. It reads more like wishful-thinking combined with pressure on the part of EAT. The Department of Communities and Local Government's website is, as usual, clear, helpful and incisively written:
Over at Brand Republic, a "mystery caller" from the marketing department calls Foxtons and asks... do you think it's a good time to buy right now? To be fair, in the transcription, the Foxtons agent sounds pretty reasonable. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't want to put a potential buyer off, but he's not making grand claims or being particularly pushy, either. Ultimately, BR give him a five out of ten, not because he tries to mislead them, but because he sounds too cheery and optimistic. What do they want? Tears?
What's this? Madness? Inebriation? No, it's a press release. According to London estate agents Alex Neil, improving lending conditions are the first sign of the boom returning. While other offices are closing, AN continues to expand, "to meet high demand". What's more visits to the AN website are apparently up 218% in the last three months. They predict a 15% rise in London house prices. Which begs the question... what's everybody else doing wrong?
Meanwhile, according to the Halifax, university towns in southern England continue to do (comparatively) well. with properties selling at a premium of as much as 20%. More here.
South Audley Street's Blenheim Bishop is the latest estate agency to - according to this - wind up its sales division. Founder Jonathan Vandermolen is quoted as saying he simply can't make it work. The agency will, however, remain open for lettings business.
Accordiing to the Independent, Savills will reveal a 45% slump in business when it reports half-year results on Thursday, and all the talk will be about job cuts. Meanwhile Foxtons, just a year after a private equity buy-out, is apparently using NM Rothschild to restructure its debt. More here. Builders Bovis are also feeling the pain. The news here is that its profits have fallen by four-fifths in the first half of 2008... and that's being mirrored in the interim dividend payment, which will be 5p a share (from 17.5p last year).
That's according to figures from Debtwire, and they don't include agencies cutting down on staff. Debtwire estimate that as many as 4,000 offices could be closed by the end of the year, that's one in three UK estate agents. More here.
As the fallout from Rightmove's controversial insistence on charging agents higher re-joining fees continues, Globrix boss Daniel Lee tells EstateAgentToday that he thinks Rightmove's behaviour "reads like a suicide note". With so many hungry and ambitious recent start-ups snapping at Rightmove's heels, surely they couldn't have expected to get away with this without a few teeth marks. And this is interesting and potentially very significant:
However, Rightmove also faces another new challenge, in the form of Property Live, the National Association of Estate Agent’s new portal. This will be a free membership benefit and its launch is just weeks away.
That's according to research by the National Association of Estate Agents. Two-thirds of agents claim buyers have "expressed doubts" about going ahead; a quarter have actually seen deals fall through, overtly as a result of fears about buying before a Stamp Duty break. More here.
Yes, believe it or not someone at Jackson Stops & Staff was stupid enough to upload a property to Rightmove with the word 'lesbians' in the spot where the property reference number should have been. The gay couple who owned the £650,000 property were, understandably, horrified when they stumbled upon the advert a few days after it went live.
Although Jackson-Stops & Staff originally said they "fail to see how we have discriminated against you", they have now paid damages of £5,000 in an out-of-court settlement to avoid being sued. A spokesman at the estate agency’s head office has since described the incident as ‘a truly regrettable situation’. Quite. More here.
Oh joy of joys, if you're planning to sell your property in today's climate then you can now expect to pay more for the pleasure. According to The Telegraph, some estate agents are now upping their fees to 2.5% to boost their earnings as house prices fall.
Let's face it, traditional estate agency fees are always a sore point and many would argue that the typical 1-1.5% fee is cheeky anyway. So, should you walk away from an agent that now commands a 2.5% multiple agency fee? David Beakon, senior negotiator at Brighton-based Bonnets Estate agents doesn't care either way...
"If people walk away because the fee is too big then that is fine with us if it is something that we do not want to deal with."
With record low numbers of properties on agents' books, you'd think they'd be more inclined for the business, non?
Otherwise it's something of a low-key interview... a reserved but polite businessman, an enthusiast for Margaret Thatcher, proud of an estate agency empire and either unwilling to engage or unchallenged regarding Foxtons's controversial reputation. He does have a view on the market... a fast fall and a slow rise... give it five years, at least.
They sold an average of six properties each in June, which is bad... a 17% fall from May, and down from 13 properties by agent this time last year. More here.
The Rat and Mouse has been passed a remarkable document that's apparently dropping through London front-doors, purportedly courtesy of Knight Frank estate agency. Here's why Knight Frank agents greet you with a smile.
Sheeesh, I feel better now. That was like Prozac. Mixed with a very dry Martini. In fact, I can't even remember, now, why I felt so depressed before. Oh yeah...
Looks like it was my fault. Damn. To make amends, there's no way I'm going to bogart this Prozac-Martini stuff:
It's an actual, factual miracle. After reading Luke's words I turned to the stone effigy of the Rat and Mouse's own personal Madonna and found it crying wet tears of joy. It's a miracle put into perspective, though, by the fact it doesn't reflect on agreed prices, but does reflect a relatively unscathed top end of the market. Nevertheless, read it again and again, and enjoy.
One of the north east's biggest estate agencies, Sarah Mains, has apparently called in the police, after months on the receiving end of a damaging campaign of mischief and rumour-mongering. According to this, the MoneySavingExpert.com forum has been asked to remove a thread suggesting (falsely) that the agency is going into administration, a story apparently being promoted by unnamed sources, and even spread by rival agents. Asked to comment, Peter Bolton King (National Association of Estate Agents chief) reveals he's being sent hate mail. If any other agents have examples of being kicked while they're down?
In the Times, Hugo Rifkind draws comparisons between the shoe business on Frogstar B and estate agency in Camden. At some point, it became uneconomical to be in any business other than estate agency. Now everybody's a struggling estate agent. Nobody can afford anything. It's all over for Camden.
The incident occurred in Savernake Road, was photographed, and has resulted in some predictably righteous indignation from the Camden New Journal and a local Labour councillor. The errant agent is said to be from the Hampstead branch. Although he/she hasn't been named, they've reportedly been on the receiving end of a stern ticking off.
According to 61% of the estate agents surveyed, the slowdown will be over with in a year. Only 28% thought it would take more than a year, 7% more than three years. More here.
They've sold 45% less property in 2008's first six months compared to the same period last year, and in London they're reporting 7.5% off house prices (although, if they're selling that much less property their house price data isn't likely to mean so much). Above £5m, property remains "relatively immune". More here.
Could you tell me a little about the background to Property Stress Relief? How did the idea originate?
We were meeting lots of vendors who were very keen to sell through our property buying business, SecureASale.co.uk. However, many of them still wanted to hold out for the best possible offer and were having little luck on the open market. We ended up giving free advice on how to improve their chances of selling their property and one lady who lived 200 miles from her vacant flat, asked us to manage her sale for her, hence the birth of PropertySressRelief.co.uk
And your own background is in estate agency?
Yes - although for the first 6 years of my working life I was a professional pianist! I decided to join Foxtons in 2004 when I’d had enough of working long nights, and so went on to work long days AND nights!
When and why did you leave Foxtons?
I (we) left Foxtons in March this year. Speaking for myself, I had achieved everything I wanted to at the company from working up the ranks to running my own branch in Hampstead and increasing revenue by 70% in less than 2 years there. There’s a saying that you don’t earn where you learn and while Foxtons was an unbelievable organization to work for, it was time for me to create my own success.
What tangible solid skills are you bringing to the table with Property Stress Relief? What are you doing that the vendor couldn’t do him- or herself?
We are doing nothing that the vendor can’t do themselves – assuming they have unlimited time, are completely objective and unemotional about their property and have the confidence to manage their agent effectively. In truth, there’s a large dose of basic common sense in everything we do, but our record between the two of us is that of successfully selling 1500 properties in 4 years. We’ve dealt with every possible nightmare transaction, we know virtually every road in N and NW London as well as all the good solicitors, surveyors, reputable tradesmen etc. Our skill is that of re-energizing the marketing of a property, doggedly chasing agents for viewings and negotiating offers as well as possible for our client.
An odd time to launch an estate agency, you might think, but Simplyzigzag ("The People's Estate Agent") is a new and ambitious name combining DIY homesales with an online estate agency model. So which is it? Is it a DIY sales site or an estate agency? You decide. For £50, you get a three-month listing with five images, plus password protected access. For £500, Simplyzigzag act as a full agent, handling enquiries, organising viewings, and - most importantly - earning access to a number of portals that cater to agents-only, including Rightmove and PropertyFinder. For £1,500, your property's featured on the homepage, you get a dedicated account manager who'll oversee the entire process, from offer to closure, to liaising with the solicitor. Like other flat-fee agencies, they point out the money to be saved over the more conventional commission model. It's perhaps a more convincing argument at a time when property's selling easily. Right now, no-sale-no-fee might be more attractive than a £1,500 speculative punt. But £500 to put a property on Rightmove and PropertyFinder seems like a decent deal.
Estate agents aren't sleeping, according to a survey commissioned by Travelodge. They're apparently the most sleep-deprived British workers, managing just 5 hours and 50 minutes of shut-eye every night. Lorry and taxi drivers are next, with 6 hours and 16 minutes, followed by bankers with 6 hours and 23 minutes. The neat connection between these results and the credit crunch and fuel price crises made me - for a moment - doubt the veracity of the results. And I became more cynical after the claim that media professionals are sleeping the sleep of the just, with a survey-topping 7 hours and 12 minutes. Err... what about the parties? Presumably that's counting daytime desk-naps, too.
This has just arrived in our "comments" section. We can't publish the name of the agency at this stage...
Just heard through the grapevine that [a major high street estate agency] have been refused credit to lease new office equipment. They even couldn't get it agreed using backstreet lenders! Is this the start of things to come, no assets, huge debts and no income?
More - subject to the advice of our fifth floor legal department - later.
So what do you do when your boss "lets you go"? Accept that these are rough times for the sector, ask for a reference and seek employment with another estate agent? Perhaps leverage your experience to set up on your own... maybe online? Or perhaps you and a fellow employee invite your boss around to your home, tie him up, give him a sedative, stand on his head for a bit, pistol-whip him, threaten to execute his 13-year-old son if he doesn't give you £200,000, and finally phone his wife and accuse him of sexually assaulting you? Ambreen Gul, formerly of Sky Lord Properties in Ilford, apparently chose option three, in what sounds like a particularly nasty, violent and (considering the whole thing took place in her own home) stupid revenge attack. Waqas Malik, the victim, had hired her, fired her, so - although it seems unlikely at this point that he'd put her through a Myers-Briggs - he must have had some sense of her character. So what persuaded him to turn up to her flat? What do you think?
Gul had managed to entice her former boss - who spent four days in hospital after the ordeal - to her flat by pretending to be interested in... selling her home to him.
First, an astonishing claim in Sunday's Observer, that Jon Hunt might be considering buying back in. He sold Foxtons for £390m at just the right time. Now there's entirely unconfirmed chatter on the subject of him getting a foot back in the door cheap in order to help it meet its loan commitments.
In related - but different - news, the Rat and Mouse has had a number of emails from people claiming to be the driver of the Foxtons Mini filmed off-roading here. Obviously I wouldn't want to cast aspersions on the integrity of my readership... but there wouldn't be room in that car for all the people who've emailed. I demand proof. Would the real Foxtons rally driver please step forward?
Apparently, it's all over. According to the National Association of Estate Agents, first-time buyer sales are up, general sales are up, the time between instruction and sale is down. Now, it's all just a matter of confidence. Personally, I'm not confident. More here.
Former Director General of The Office of Fair Trading Sir Bryan Carsberg, after a low-profile roadshow on behalf of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in which he asked as what we thought about estate agents, published his findings today, with 30 recommendations. Ex-estate agent Henry Pryor is less than impressed:
The review that Sir Bryan undertook included a road show around the country where interested parties could contribute to an overdue debate. Unfortunately in at least one case it seems that the response was so poor that the event was cancelled. I managed to push my way past a dozen others who attended one consultation event in central London to find that even Sir Bryan didn't attend - leaving the evening to be compared by an RICS sponsor.
To the Mercantile Group, who bought 50% of Chesterton back during the troubles of 2005, for a reported £3.1m. The deal - we're told - involves 34 original offices plus another ten franchises. Fourteen branches not included in the deal are likely to be sold by the administrator. In recent months Humberts shares have suffered a 94% fall.
The Rat and Mouse is always interested to discover new and interesting ways in which estate agents are using social media (and I've long been urging agents to blog). Nor is this the first time we've come across houses for sale on Flickr. But we've really got to take our hats (bowler for the directors, R&M baseball caps for the interns) off to Barnet estate agents Alex Kale, who mixes homes for sale with pictures of his Staffordshire Bull Terrier and his Porsche 944 Turbo all on the same Flickr feed. Proving that, in a Web2.0 world, there is no separation between the private and the professional.
According to the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA), 39% of agents are reporting tenant demand outstripping supply, and 77% of landlords are holding property with the intention of neither buying nor selling in the immediate future. A surplus of new-build two-bedroom flats is keeping rents stable in that particular area. In general, continuing demand looks likely, while it remains difficult to get a loan. More here. On the subject of loans, it's more difficult than it was to get one from Egg, the online bank owned by Citi, which - according to this - is pulling out of the mortgage market. It's also more expensive to get one from Busted & Broken, which is hiking rates across its offerings by as much as 0.55%. No doubt partly as a result, nobody's buying. According to figures from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) estate agents sold an average of 17.4 properties each in the three months to May. That's the lowest since records began in 1978. And they might be right to be wary. Data from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) points to 23,000 potential negative equity cases in homeowners who took out 100% mortgages in the year to March 31. More on both those stories here. Finally, the other piece in the jigsaw, also supplied by the RICS, might surprise you. Sentiment - the estate agent/surveyor swellness quotient - improved marginally in May on less bad than expected sales figures. So, technically, what the figures reveal is marginally less rates of unswellness. More here.
Just some closing news and views before the Rat and Mouse puts on its Friday night shoes and heads out to dance the Fishstick... lenders are apparently interpreting yesterday's Bank of England decision to keep interest rates on hold by keeping interest rates on hold. And, er, raising them. Abbey and Broken and Busted have hiked rates, others - we suspect - to follow shortly. And in other news, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) predicts that 5% of estate agents will lose their jobs this year. That's 15,000 estate agents with even more time to send anonymous tips to the Rat and Mouse. But then they're also predicting there'll be 1% fewer people in work across the board. So - there you are, guys - it's not all bad news. Have a great weekend.
Wow - that's from Plebble.com... a website that dares to go places other websites' lawyers might have deemed off-limits. Plebble allows users to rate customer service and value-for-money, and provide rolling averages. Foxtons isn't doing great... in fact, they're even doing worse than the Government:
The problem - as with any social media - is the potential for mischief making, and we all know that Foxtons tends to carry the can for the public's generalised (and often irrational) distaste for estate agents. That said, the above allegation (about which we know absolutely nothing, other than it exists on the Pebble website, and so can't and won't comment on its reliability) is extraordinary. We'd love to know exactly how a viewing or valuation could possibly turn into a rumpus.
UPDATE 18.30PM - WE'VE JUST BEEN CONTACTED BY PLEBBLE.COM. THEY HAVE APPARENTLY TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED THE ABOVE COMMENT WHILE THEY DISCUSS IT WITH THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE.
Seems like an odd time to open a new branch, but that's exactly what Foxtons is doing. The Camden office - at 120 Parkway - opens its doors on Saturday, June 14, and will be celebrating their new premises with cappuccini and zero commission for the first 200 instructions. It's a courageous way of winning business from the rivals and getting a bunch of Foxtons boards about, but how will the zero percenters fair compared to the other clients when it comes to pushing homes?
I once convinced a gullible friend that I'd met a man who'd exchanged and completed on a new home, only to turn up there, put the key in the "door" and discover that the whole property was made of paper. It was basically a giant, 3D photograph of a house. I thought I'd been pretty smart, until I read this. Here's the (true) story of fake lettings agent Nuruazzaman Miah, who described luxury apartments so well to would-be tenants that they parted with money without even seeing any bricks and mortar. He apparently managed to collect £3,000 from one prospective tenant in a train station... which is arguably less believable than the whole paper house story.
Okay, Thurrock's beyond the M25 (actually, I had to look it up), but this kind of estate agency craziness can't go uncelebrated. Russell Quirk, of Quirk Deakin, is promising to pay the difference if any house he sells is worth less in five years. He's gambling on a regeneration of Thurrock (part of the Thames Gateway expansion) and that five years is enough time for values to pick up again. Brave? Misguided? Read more here.
Brightsale’s Andy Etches tells me that listings on his website have risen 25% a month since February and that viewing levels are higher than in August 2007. He believes that vendors who would have used Brightsale alongside a traditional agent last year are happier to use the website alone, and even more people are considering adding Brightsale’s services to their high street representation. With low overheads built into the business plan, the company’s well positioned to deal with the current downturn.
Halifax was one Rightmove's founding partners, along with Countrywide, Connells and Royal & Sun Alliance, but the news is that they've just bailed, selling their entire 13.1% holding. Rightmove's share price has dropped today, but not catastrophically. The sale follows bearish predictions by Rightmove, a company whose fortunes are linked closely with the fortunes of the housing market. More here.
Eighty offices, 700 staff and a suspension in trading "pending clarification of its financial position". Part owned by colourful private equity billionaire Vincent Tcheguiz, Humberts issued a profits warning in January, and fired some of its executive appointments. Two days ago the new chairman began to express doubt about the company's future... whether it could meet conditions that would enable a rescue package. The Rat and Mouse says... watch this space, closely.
According to research by Debtwire, there were 13,000 estate agents offices in January and now there are only 12,000, with each office employing on average four agents. (If you think you've seen the missing 4,000 estate agents, please let us know.) By extrapolating from the figures, there's talk of 600 estate agents handing over their clip boards and keys every single week. More here.
... where they're warning of a 25% house price crash, between now and the beginning of 2010. Savills' Yolande Barnes is, however, also pointing out that it's in the power of the lenders to turn this into a 6% dip, by lending money once again. If you're shopping in the £5m+ bracket (see below) you don't need to worry too much.
They apparently launched last month, but we somehow must have missed it. AgentQuote are an interesting online proposition... if you're a vendor, you register with them (for free), fill in a little information about the property you wish to sell, you sit back and wait for agents to "quote" for your business, letting you know how many potential viewers they've registered on their books and their rates of commission. Since commissions are pretty much similar across the board - and, in practice, open to last minute negotiation or matching - this probably isn't the most useful aspect. And I'd be very interested to know how AgentQuote intend to check up on an agent's "potential viewers" claims. AgentQuote say they'll be offering a comparison service, too - with agents rated by previous clients. Agents have to register, too, to receive leads... and this is the business bit of the business plan. AgentQuote will charge to add estate agents to their list... because, of course, agents have lots of spare money to throw around right now. We'll be watching this closely.
It was an expensive house - so we're talking about a considerable amount of commission, shifted to Hamptons in the Court of Appeal a couple of days ago. Why I am I writing about this? Because the story's interesting - in a technical kind of way - and might have repercussions for estate agents in the future. A Mrs Bicknall appointed Foxtons to sell her rather expensive house. When they didn't... she enlisted the help of Hamptons, and changed the Foxtons agreement from sole agency to multiple. While Foxtons were sole agents, they'd shown the house to a Mr and Mrs Low... but the Lows hadn't bitten. When Hamptons showed the Lows around, they did bite, and eventually exchanged. Foxtons caught wind of this later, and demanded their kickback commission, pointing to a clause in their contract that stated she'd be liable if she sold the house to "a purchaser introduced by them". Foxtons took her to court, and won. And it's that decision that was overturned a couple of days ago. The appeal judge based his decision on the definition of "purchaser". A purchase is apparently a purchaser when he decides to purchase. When Foxtons introduced the Lows, they weren't purchasers... they became purchasers afterwards. Interesting. You can read the full report - if you can be bothered - here.
The Times asks, will choosing a toff like Savills over a chav like Winkworth give you a better class of service? And the answer, it appears, is yes. but expect to pay for the privilege (of virtual tours, open days, and two dedicated negotiators who "listen")... as much as 2.5% in commission. What you get is an agent who can talk to the talk:
Jonathan Hewlett, of Savills in Central London, says that when dealing with such properties you must operate with the confidence of the insider: “You need to be able to talk about St Tropez, the beaches and the traffic, have been into a brownstone in New York, and understand the vagaries of Zermatt versus St Moritz.”
As opposed to the latest Chelsea fixture, and where to find blackmarket Sky cards. Is it me... or is all this quite funny? I don't doubt - though - that for certain properties, you'd be wiser choosing a top tier agent. But isn't it mainly about choosing the agent that appeals to the kind of person who is most likely to sell your house? Buyers with more money register with Savills, Chesterton, Knight Frank etc, so if your property's expensive, they're probably the people to turn to. The Times feature is here.
The prediction comes from movewithus, a network of independent estate agents including Rolfe East, Clarke Hillyer and Douglas Allen. According to their chief, quoted here, we can expect to see a third of UK agents out of a job by the end of the year. Another interesting detail is that the piece mentions rumours that had reached the Rat and Mouse, but which we were too cowardly to publish, that Foxtons staff are jumping before they're pushed:
At least 63 staff left the company in February alone following poor sales figures.
It's located at Bowl Court, in Shoreditch, a vacant four-storey building in prime London real estate land that - according to Indymedia - has been deliberately gutted by the owners to deter squatters... toilets smashed, windows smashed, hole in the roof etc... and its part of a weekend of squat-related action, matching people to places and other people. More here.
The Rat and Mouse is used to finding estate agents at the bullish end of the spectrum when it comes to the business game of house price predictions, so it's with a certain amount of surprise that I've received a -15% by 2013 from online estate agency Brightsale (admittedly, an agency that isn't afraid of being different). It's part of a report into the future of estate agency, which uses the prediction as evidence that high street estate agencies will be no more than "niche" rarities by 2013, as diminishing business drives them online and out of bricks-and-mortar. You can read "Is There a Future for High Street Estate Agency here.
Thanks to the Zoomf blog for pointing out the way to this great American blog post revealing some truly shockingly bad property listing photographs from 2007. View. Laugh. Shake your head in disbelief.
Hamptons complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about a Savills ad in which Savills claimed to show a significant lead over its rivals defined by number of offices and number of visits to its website. Hamptons suggested the numbers were awry and that Savills had deliberately left off Foxtons. According to this, Savills have come away unscathed, having defended their numbers to the satisfaction of the ASA. Is the current market notching up the tension among agents?
I’ve shown properties at 6am and helped other clients by collecting them from their offices at midnight and settling them into their new homes.
Blimey. He's over here, telling the Times's Career & Jobs supplement what it takes to succeed in the high-end London lettings business.
One of the great things about this job is that I’m not stuck in the office. I spend most of the day out and about, whether that’s getting new keys cut, organising a gas safety certificate, meeting clients or doing something deeply unglamorous – but obviously important – such as unclogging a lavatory. I’ll do whatever it takes to facilitate things for my clients.
I seem to remember there’s an art collective somewhere who specialise in hijacking estate agent signs, but after Googling for a bit I can’t find who it is. Any ideas?
And it has nothing, whatsoever, to do with the £152m in bonuses due to be distributed among it's 5,000 staff. 2007 bonuses are said to be up 20% on 2006 levels, reflecting a 15% increase in profits.
Last summer I reported the appearance on the market of the Solent's landmark No Man's Land fort. It turns out things haven't exactly gone smoothly. Knight Frank were instructed to market the remarkable property for £4m, after the owner's financial backers went bust. However - according to this - the said owner isn't prepared to move out without a fight. He's attached upturned tables to the helipads and locked the doors. If Knight Frank want to conduct any viewings, looks like they'll have to bring the Navy.
OFT was due to launch a scheme from April 6 that would make membership of an ombudsman service compulsory for UK estate agents. Accordingo to the BBC, the start date has been delayed, and no new date has been given.
And yesterday it was all looking sohopeless. Now there's news of Foxtons, Muswell Hill estate agent, Brian Gradner, stepping into the fray to defend a Supersave shopkeeper from a drunken chav shoplifter who spat in his face and racially abused him. Credit where credit's due... respect, from the Rat and Mouse, Mr Gradner.
This time, Bairstow Eves, who apparently managed to post photocopied images of a client's passport and driver's license on the Internet. They meant to post photographs of the house. A house... a passport... easy mistake to make. More here.
Jeez... one moment it's some Government body, next it's the Commies. What's an honest estate agent to do? According to its blog, Class War is planning an afternoon of disruption for Foxtons, Islington on March 3. Furthermore, they're calling on workers to dismantle agents' boards... except only the illegal ones.
It's a test case. The complaint is that the Foxtons letting contract with landlords stipulates that it can continue to take commission from a landlord after the first term has ended if a tenant renews, and that it can take commission for the full term even if a landlord decides to end an agreement and sell halfway through a tenancy. It seems to me that Foxtons is taking the heat here for a practise that is not uncommon. One "high-profile" complainant, quoted in the Telegraph, is Blue Peter's Konnie Huq, landlady on two flats in west London:
She said on Tuesday that the OFT's decision to take Foxtons to the High Court was "a victory for landlords for everywhere" [sic].
The expected cheering in the streets didn't follow.
Islington Green Party have named and shamed Foxtons for leaving the lights on. The estate agents and Borders book shop were condemned as Upper Street's worst polluters a few months ago. Borders have since been praised for changing policy, Foxtons is - apparently - still lit up like a casino. More here.
An interesting piece in the Independent on Sunday about Tesco's imminent plans - after the failure of its private sales initiative in 2007 - to become a fully-fledged estate agency. According to the piece, we should expect to see estate agency offices and dedicated staff in Tesco supermarkets across the country by Spring. The agents will not only undercut traditional high street services - charging, the rumour goes, as little as 1% commission - but will also be able to use competition laws to force Rightmove to list their properties.
He's Ian Jack, and here he describes how he took a walk down Upper Street in an attempt to feel sorry for estate agents. They're rarely heroes in fiction. They've become a byword for "boosterism". And now they're even about to be stripped of their one compensation... easy money. So... can he find it in his heart to shed a tear for the first potential victims of a property price correction? To be honest, it's not entirely clear. Except he likes Savills Paul Williams - but then I've heard it rumoured that Savills agents all attend an actual six week-long intensive charm course in their first year, with refreshers every other year.
Low volume, low mortgage data, falling prices... it's enough to make an estate agent adopt a foetal position. Not at Chesterton, though. They've just opened a 6000 sq ft flagship branch in Westminster (it's here), with two floors and glass walls. Inside... a Smart convertible, which will be given away in a draw to any one of the branch's clients instructing the branch over the coming four months on a property within a one mile radius. The Rat and Mouse doesn't want to put a damper on things, but anybody living within a one mile radius of Gillingham Street is unlikely to notice the acquisition of a new Smart car. Anyway... nice desk!
Okay. It's Humberts share price. (Damn! I made that too easy!)
Yesterday, the estate agents predicted a small loss for the first quarter, and announced the resignation of their executive chairman and their chief executive. Today, the seat has been kicked from under their share price. Tomorrow's a new day. It might be crap, too. (Thanks to the Rat and Mouse reader who alerted me to this.)
An angry mob suffering negative equity, that is. Thanks to the Rat and Mouse reader who sent me this fascinating New York Times piece about a test case in which a woman is suing her agent for apparently misleading her about the true value of a property "because he feared she would back out and he would lose his $30,000 commission". With US property values dropping like Newton's apple, experts predict more angry homeowners to send their agents invites to court. Obviously, things are a little different over here (in the UK). Apart from the wealthy minority who use search agents, we tend to be represented by estate agents when we're in the position of vendor. That, and we don't order Cherry Coke at restaurants. Nevertheless, I'll be watching the case with interest. The agent's lawyer (wow... there's a match made in heaven) is blaming the buyer for a failure to do her homework.
Shortly before Christmas we reported on a growing stand-off between Balham residents and Foxtons estate agents regarding residential parking and brightly painted Minis. The Rat and Mouse got a little psychological and suggested some SW12-ers were using Foxtons to vent... a safety valve for other frustrations in their lives. Well, turns out the story was a little more complicated that we thought. The original Wimbledon Guardian piece was followed by a series of comments purportedly from Balham locals, mostly in support of the agents' right to park where they like... as long as they pay at the meters. Now it seems that a good proportion of the comments have been traced back, via their IP addresses, to Foxtons agents. Some were "so offensive they had to be removed from the site". Ouch.
That's Divorce Week... because this is traditionally the busiest week in the entire divorce calendar. What's this got to do with Savills? Well, they've just announced that Savills representatives will be joining Collaborative Solutions, a divorce mediation consultancy with the stated intention of keeping divorces out of the courts, and helping warring couples war with dignity.
According to data from Hamptons, there are less than seven buyers per London property, down from 11 just a year ago. The Standardtalks to Phil Tenant of Hamptons' Chelsea branch, and he's all right, Jack, with twelve per property. In Fulham, it's apparently a little more worrying, where there are just four times as many buyers as sellers, and the figure's five in St John's Wood and Clapham, and six in the City and Wimbledon. Inevitably, sellers are down, too, with both Hamptons and Douglas and Gordon reporting around 30% fewer properties in their books. Tough times lie ahead for estate agents.
LSL Property Services, owners of a number of estate agencies including Reeds Rains, is pruning. According to this in the Telegraph, 12 branches and 315 jobs have had the chop after a 40% fall in transactions. A portent for full-blown estate agency disaster? It's far from clear. LSL Chief Exec Simon Embley and the Rat and Mouse would both like to point out that this has happened before, back in 2005, when we were urging readers to take in an estate agent and give him/her a hot meal. That was immediately before two consecutive years of estate agents fattening themselves like seals. What's certain is that Property-Careers.com is probably the most unfortunate domain name in the LSL portfolio.
Over at the Wimbledon Guardian, Balham residents are getting into a lather about the Foxtons fleet parking on their residential side streets and forcing them to park their own cars on neighbouring roads. What?! says the local Foxtons chief. We're paying at the bays just like anybody else driving into the area to work... And yet the residents just pick on the Foxtons estate agents, apparently even shouting at them from their doorways (read the comments below the piece). What's going on? Obviously, it's partly because they're the easiest to recognise, what with the cars and the aftershave and everything. But the Rat and Mouse believes it's also to do with the delight people take in identifying an "untouchable". Telemarketers... Jehovah's Witnesses... Foxtons estate agents... they're all treated as outside the circle of deserving basic manners... so in some ways it's a bit of a treat when the ordinary Joe - fresh from a day of having his nose hair tugged by any of his many bosses - can find an opportunity to vent. Get over it, says the Rat and Mouse. How about a "hug an estate agent" day in 2008?
Remember Malcolm Green - the fanciful Hampstead estate agent in trouble for conning a schizophrenic old man out of more than half a million pounds? Last Friday, he and a colleague were found guilty on a number of charges. They're both going to spend Christmas and New Year behind bars, before returning for sentencing. But solicitors representing Green and his partner Shevket intend to introduce psychiatric evidence to prove that both estate agents are depressives and would be high suicide risks in prison. More here.
Director Patrick French of Lloyds Residential Property Services has been banned by the OFT for failing to pass on details of offers to clients and failing to disclose a personal interest in properties to potential buyers. Looking at the report, it appears the entire firm is to get the chop... which is big(ish) news, because if it's the same Lloyds I'm thinking of they're not a trivial player in east London.
According to a survey of estate agents, it's a troubled one. The HotProperty survey - quoted by Nubricks - reveals that less half of respondents believed they'd be relevant after a decade, and only 28% thought they had any practical future in twenty years.
According to the FT, Tesco - still, officially, in limbo between its suspended private sales service and a possible "new and exciting on-line estate agency service - has complained to the OFT about Rightmove's refusal to list Tesco's properties. Rightmove's response?
"The analogy is, if we opened a grocery store next to Tesco and found people were still going to Tesco, would our next move be to insist that Tesco let us open up on their premises?"
Actually, it's pretty difficult to find an accurate analogy right now, since it's not at all clear what Tesco's intentions are. However Tesco's concern appears to be that Rightmove is much more than simply a shop front... they are a standard online entry into the property market. But do they dominate any more than Tesco dominate the grocery business?
It was the first prosecution by Hackney Council of its kind, and the lucky estate agency making local history, last Friday, at Thames Magistrates Court, was Sovereign, of 223 Victoria Park Road. So what did they do? Or - in local parlance - wot they done?Apparently, they've been caught sticking "sold" and "to let" boards outside properties despite the fact they hadn't been instructed, thus breaching section 13 of the Trade Descriptions Act 1968. From Sovereign's website:
The staff at Sovereign House are proud of the reputation we have gained over the years backed by a strong brand image, easily recognised all over the areas we cover on our black 'SOLD BY' boards.
He's called Malcolm Green, of Greenfields in Hampstead; but - according to prosecutors at Snaresbrook Crown Court - you might know him as Malcolm "Ferdinand" Green or Malcolm "de Villiers" Green (or, and who knows, if he was feeling very grand as he slipped into his topper and spats and clamped down on a monocle, Malcolm Ferdinand de Villiers Green). Really, he's Malcolm Alan Green, and he faces charges of conspiracy, theft and dishonest money transfer. He's accused of conning a schizophrenic customer into investing in bogus property developments, stealing jewelry and rare stamps from the man, and transferring share certificates into his own name. Not nice... but, this is important and we can't stress it enough, he's denying all charges and hasn't been convicted. There's also a little confusion regarding his school days. He claims to have attended Highgate School, but the school has no record of him as a pupil. Furthermore, there's the little matter of an international arrest warrant following a failure to turn up to court previously.
He said: “I fell from a horse and broke my femur while in Cannes. I was in hospital for 17 days and then I went to Switzerland for rehabilitation."
And it's for the pure quality of that line that the Rat and Mouse has decided to honour Mr Green with this award.
... claims Rosie Millard, writing in the Sunday Times. Avaricious... property obsessed... aren't we all "ghastly", she comments. I'm still trying to fathom the logical narrative of the piece, which starts as an attack on agents, turns swiftly into a defence, and then ends in an attack on everybody for their boring property fixation. And then it's signed off by Rosie Millard, who traded in a career discussing the arts for one writing about letting and debt. Help me, I'm lost.
R House Estate Agents welcomes to the market this detached Victorian style DOLLS HOUSE, the House comprises of 3 Bedrooms, Lounge, Diner, Study, Kitchen, Scullery, Bathroom, Basement patio garden and servant's entrance. The property has stained wooden floors and fully working electric lights with suitable transformer supplied. It is sold complete with all furniture and furnishings including some hand made carpets. Viewing strictly by appointments.
£1,500 buys you a three bedroom detached doll's house in Cornwall. The agents - R House - have done a fine job of integrating it into their more conventional sales, including full particulars... the room dimensions listed in inches.
They're an estate agency and they've a house price index all of their own. The October results show a 0.3% rise on the month, nationally. The top 20% of the market (I like the way Chesterton does this) is up 14.5% on the year, the bottom 20% is up 6%. Now, here's the kicker:
Prices in London fell 0.1% in October but annual inflation remains robust at +12.4%.
Yorkshire and the Humber also saw falls in the month. And here's another interesting bit of data:
The average property of a retired person is now £22,203 higher than the price of a property owned by a skilled manual worker – which is £123,203.
Exactly how the Rat and Mouse interprets that I'm not sure, but we like Chesterton's statistical creativity.
"If there is documentation about a haunting there's no point in hiding it. Although I wouldn't put it in the particulars, I'd have a word with the potential purchaser - with the vendor's agreement."
Yeah... fair's fair. Peter Bolton King, Chief Executive of the National Association of Estate Agents.
Interestingly, News International already has a 50% stake in PropertyFinder, which charges agents to list on its site. Globrix will do things differently, using spiders to crawl agents' sites to produce a search database. It's not a new technique, and it's one that's rumoured to have previously got other property search start-ups in hot water with market leader Rightmove. According to this in the FT, Globrix will offer estate agents the opportunity to opt out. Revenue will come - instead - from an advertising model.
With News International cash behind it, it's likely to become a force to be reckoned with. As we all know, it's a competitive market, and - ultimately - success is all about innovation and implementation. The Rat and Mouse watches developments with interest.
Foxtons founder and former owner Jon Hunt has never counted his money. He counts everybody else's and pays someone to do the maths.
Foxtrels aren't made, they're born. They're all distantly related, and share a distinct genetic heritage.
Every year, Foxtons' worst peformers drive their Minis to a disused airfield in Luton, where they're forced to recreate scenes from The Italian Job for the top-earners' amusement.
Foxtons for sale boards are actually holograms. Every house in London has one, and it can be turned on and off remotely, from Foxtons Chiswick HQ.
Five out of every nine people secretly fantasise about being a Foxtons estate agent.
Hamptons do it. Foxtons do it. The Americans do it. It's the open-house... when the estate agent rings everybody on their books who might be interested and invites them around for a party at your place. On the plus side... you tidy up and hide the embarrassing book titles once. On the minus side (from this interesting piece in the Telegraph):
Hosting an open house two months ago proved a costly mistake for the owner of one three-bedroom terrace house in Bow, East London, after a crystal decanter worth £1,000 was stolen. "The saddest part was that the estate agent didn't seem all that bothered. They had taken names and addresses of all who attended, but were reluctant to ring them up for fear of alienating potential buyers."
Interestingly, Foxtons limit an open house to 45 minutes, and show people around one-at-a-time, giving them three or four minutes each. Isn't that missing a trick? I've read about American agents drumming up a crowd - including, perhaps, agents from the same office - to try to create a sense of competition and pressure. Mind you, did you know an American agent will clean your place up and hide your dodgy books for you too?
Charlotte Brodhurst who sold her property in south-west London stated that "my sale was particularly difficult due to a irascible neighbour and problems with the leases. Alison Craske at Marsh & Parsons got all the leaseholders in the building together one evening, went along with coffee for everyone and got the problem sorted out."
Go, Alison!
"The way that she dealt with everything was outstanding. I have never received such an extraordinary level of care and compassion from any organization before. I am hugely grateful to her for plodding through the mire of paperwork and human difficulties that fell in the way of the sale. She really went beyond the call of duty and I am certain, that if it were not for Alison's ability and charm, the buyer would have walked away before completion."
That's what the Rat and Mouse calls heart-warming.
It's part of a report by the Register of Estate Agents that suggests that, despite a tough climate for estate agents, customer satisfaction is way up. According to RoEA boss Henry Pryor, only a single per cent of comments from RoEA users has been negative, and significant progress has been made since last year, when the Ombudsman received record numbers of complaints. An alternative reading is that the RoEA has become something of a repository for the good guys. Either way, it's useful.
Low fees online estate agency HouseSimple was hired (along with Jackson-Stops & Staff and Walkers) to market a £3m Essex estate, including seven bedrooms, 67 acres and a further cottage in the grounds. According to HouseSimple, the website received 5,000 "summary views" and 500 "detailed views" for the property, and it was the only agency to bring in offers. One, the asking price, was accepted. The buyer exchanged last Wednesday. HouseSimple charged 0.67% (a discount from its usual multi-agency deal of 0.75%), earning just over £20,000 in commission. A more typical high street deal of 2% would have cost the vendors £60,000. It might be an important moment, one you'll hear cited many times in the future to demonstrate that these new, online alternatives can shift expensive properties too.
Ninety-thousand dollars of the assets are in the form of a Bentley. Who wants it?
According to the bankruptcy filing, Foxtons' largest creditors are its former parent company, Foxtons Ltd. of London, which is owed $1.8 million, and the London Foxtons' parent company, Heven Holdings Ltd., which is owed $35 million. The company also owes $3 million to Enterprise Fleet Services of Wayne, for leased autos. Other creditors include General Electric Capital Corp. ($272,264); Marple Fleet Leasing of Pennsylvania ($70,958); and AT&T ($61,269).
Janice Turner, writing in the Times, takes a - let's say - cynical view of the London housing market... from the all-new five signs of an up-and-coming neighbourhood, to the real effect of the Tories' Stamp Duty and Inheritance Tax plans. But she's most entertaining on the subject of Foxtons:
On Saturday morning Foxtons foxstrels are handing balloons out to babies with the legend “0 per cent”. Already, their one-time-only start-up offer to flog your house for free has vacuumed up whole chunks of the neighbourhood: they have 250 houses on their books and counting. Their message to all the long-standing estate agents is “you’re dead, look upon our coffee shop and despair”.
According to two former employees, laid off last week, yes. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act requires companies with 100 or more employees give 60 days' notice before mass layoffs. Foxtons don't appear to have given any notice at all. The employees have retained a lawyer and are gearing up for a suit. Foxtons point to exceptions (natural disasters, unforeseen changes in the business climate, circumstances in which notice might jeopardize attempts to gain financing) but it's hardly clear which of these might apply. If the suit's successful, they might be looking at a bill of $4m to cover lost wages. More here.
Property blog BricksnClicks has the scoop on news that Tesco appears to have ditched its For Sale By Owner online offering:
Tesco Property Market launched in the early summer offering the public a chance to sell their house privately for £199. The offering immediately ran into trouble with estate agents and the property portals... I understand that all of Tesco’s existing clients will receive full refunds plus a good will payment.
According to BricksnClicks, Tesco's retreat comes after the OFT ruled that Tesco were acting as estate agents, and so must comply with all necessary legislation. The demands associated with that make a £199 fixed fee impractical.
In Tesco's own words:
As we can't be both an on-line estate agent and private seller we reluctantly have to suspend the private seller service launched earlier in the year. We will however continue to use Tesco Property Market to provide advice and support to home movers, as well as offering great value products including mortgages, insurance, conveyancing and HIPs.
They thought they could avoid it, but it seems not. Thought you'd enjoy this bit:
The decision comes as some customers expressed frustration that the company won't release them from their contracts. "We don't want to be listed with anybody else," said Mary Lou Mangarella, 77, who signed a contract in June with Foxtons to sell her New Brunswick home. "We signed with Foxtons. If they can't service the listing, we want an unconditional release."
They're based in south London (Streatham and West Norwood branches) and talk - to the Telegraph - about their paperless office and recycling commitments, and how they plant a tree for every house sold. They're here.
It's a confusing story, but it appears that Foxtons' US division - the part that wasn't off-loaded in the recent £390m sell-off - is in serious trouble. According to a local New Jersey news source, the West Long Branchoffice is definitely closing, having been soundly slapped by the US housing market slowdown. What's more, the company's senior vice president is quoted as saying that the company "no longer has the liquidity to operate as a going concern". Foxtons US faces - it would appear - bankruptcy.
Meet Pav Sheen, Essex-trained, London-practising estate agent, self-confessed master of the dark arts, who - interviewed here - claims he's tried it all:
"We played on people's ignorance, and nudged them into making decisions, so that we could close a deal as quickly as possible," he recalls. A favourite trick would be to arrange two viewings to coincide, and when one lot had left, get someone from the office to ring, and pretend that it was them putting in an offer.
Who'd fall for that? The Tweenies?
Anyway, he's also claiming to have turned... from poacher to game-keeper... and has self-published a book for the benefit of vendors far and wide. Here's a short extract from the summary over at his website:
Chapter 7 deals with the topic of the Valuation. From the moment the estate agent steps into your home The Sales Show has begun with one objective in mind at all times, “ to get you to sign on the dotted line”. It will show you how the agent comes to price he values your home at and how he may overvalue your property just to get it on the market. It will also explain the way in which the agent achieves a high commission rate as a result of over valuing your property and ways in which he gets you to sign with his company.
It gets more sinister:
Chapter 9 talks about other sales tools an estate agent may use that are naked to the eye. How an estate agent uses word structures, different voice tones and physical gestures to subconsciously sell you their products.
And I thought my agent was just playing with his balls.
Anyway... the book - "Tips, Tricks, Traps - Everything You Need To Know About Estate Agents" - is available here. And if you're the kind of person who needs this kind of advice, you're probably in no position to notice the absence of a literate editor. Tomorrow... a special edition of Glengarry Glen Ross for CBBC.
Did you realise that Foxtons is kitted out with the Big Brother diary room chair? From the Sunday Mirror... and an interview with Alan Davies:
You own the original Big Brother chair from the first series.
AD: ...It’s an egg chair, which have been devalued by the fact Foxtons have them in their estate agents, so now they’re just twats’ chairs.
Incidentally, I wonder how many people who grab a laugh from a Foxtons gag have actually had any kind of negative experience with the firm?
According to this in the Telegraph, pricey West End commercial rents are proving too much for the estate agents. Savills might be considering downsizing in the Berkeley Square area, DTZ might be going, Knight Frank will be leaving Hanover Square in January. The culprits?
While hedge funds only take small spaces - up to 15,000 sq ft - the prices they pay drive up rents for other residents. As a result, agents have found themselves victims of their own success.
It's been an accident waiting to happen for some time... the steady growth, improvement and influence of free-and-easy, Web2.0 online estate agents and their worsening relationship with the sole-agency agreement-loving high street agents. At some point, there was going to be either a big rumpus, with property bloggers standing around shouting "Fight! Fight! Fight!", or (preferably) a big fight, with property bloggers standing around shouting "Rumpus! Rumpus! Rumpus!". Clearly riled by recent comments made by Spicer Haart's Paul Smith, Brightsale (generally regarded as some of the property business's Web2.0 good guys) are doing the only sensible thing and - after seeing some of their own clients penalised by high street agents for signing up online - attempting to bring matters to a head. They've written to the Office for Fair Trading, demanding they look again into the issue of fair competition in estate agenting, making some specific recommendations, including "cooling off" periods for disappointed homesellers. Here's Brightsale's Andy Etches:
“For such a senior figure in the estate agency profession [Smith, above] to call for contracts which prevent the use of online agents is regressive to the development of competition and to the evolution of estate agency in this country. ‘Sole selling rights’ contracts are iniquitous and clearly not in the interests of consumers. We don’t see how any contract which allows an estate agent to claim a fee even when a home owner sells his property to his neighbour following a private chat over a garden fence can possibly be defended as fair to consumers.”
a real estate broker named Becky Fatemi eases into her black Porsche Cayenne and heads for Connaught Square..." Now that's the way to start a London property story. It's an interesting Bloomberg tour of the London market, mostly - we're guessing - aimed at Americans (it explains phrases such as gazump, buy-to-let). But it's worth reading by anyone for its intimate look at Foxtons. Did you know this?
From his perch in Chiswick Park, manager Jean Jameson, a 37-year-old from South Africa in a gray suit and pink tie, plays a Foxtons version of Big Brother. He can peer into Foxtons offices across London via video camera to check up on brokers and see who's available for assignments.
Tesco might think that ‘‘Every little helps" — but it won’t be at my expense.
Love it. He calls on estate agents to stick together and prove their worth. More controversially:
Estate agents with sole agency contracts need to be careful. There’s nothing to stop their vendors from sellling privately. You need to consider reverting to sole selling rights and include a clause which prevents the seller from using an Internet Property Retailer at the same time.
If I'm a buyer, I don't really need to see someone opening a cupboard door, what I need to see is the floor plan, the room-by-room descriptions, and that's what's going to help me decide whether I want to see the property or not.
Which explains why their selection of vidcasts and podcasts are such a strange hybrid... an automatic computer-generated voice reading particulars, accompanied - in the "video" version - by still photographs. It's functional, fast and cheap, which has got to be right... but the dalek does nothing for Foxtons' friendly image.
More news to me from the IHT piece is BuyAssociation - a website offering advice about buying houses and, er, other stuff. Here, you can listen to podcasts by Adrian Mills and Maggie Philbin interviewing industry experts on property and cosmetic surgery. What?!! Oh yes, it's a homebuying and facelifting site... an impartial buying guide for the property-hungry and slack-joweled. And what's odd about that?
According to Rosalind Russell, writing in the Telegraph, estate agents are deliberately populating property listing websites with homes that were sold weeks ago or - in some instances, she hints - were never on the market. The idea is to appear useful and relevant during a property shortage, and to encourage the phone call in order to register the details of a potential buyer. The result for us? A waste of time. For estate agents, should the public get wise to this? It's put succinctly by Nick Goble of Winkworth:
Credibility is being undermined by more than one agent, and if we lose our credibility, we are snookered.
Apparently "thousands of estate agents" are threatening Tesco Property Market with legal action if they don't remove their listings. These are particulars which - according to Tesco's agreement with fish4homes - were to stay on the site until October, even though fish4homes have already pulled out of an ongoing relationship with the supermarket-turned-estate agency.
According to this, Tesco's Property Market has drawn more than a quarter of a million visitors in less than a week, and they've already managed to sign up a handful of private sellers. The vast majority of their listings, however, are for the chop. Keen to put things right with angry estate agents, Tesco spokesman Mark Davis commented thus:
I’ve spent a decade working in the property industry and I can understand why estate agents might view Tesco’s entry into the market with initial scepticism because competition can be tough. But it benefits consumers and makes businesses work harder for them.
fish4homes continually strives to provide the highest quality service to its network of clients. Because Tesco is one of the UK’s biggest and most widely-recognised brands, we initially felt that involvement in the Tesco Property Market initiative would give our new and existing customers’ property adverts maximum exposure and deliver maximum value for our partners moving forward.
Right, every little helps... but?
Since the launch of Tesco Property Market, we have received valuable customer feedback and have decided that our involvement with the site, in its current format, is not in the best interest of our clients. We are therefore terminating our agreement with Tesco.
Does this mean that Tesco will be left, shortly, with zero properties for sale?
... and then fires indiscriminately into the property industry crowd, injuring both sell-it-yourself websites and estate agents. According to a missive from Brightsale boss Endy Etches, Tesco is doomed to failure.
Selling a home is a very big deal, and the feedback we have had over the past six months is that people do not feel confident in going it completely alone. They need the support not just of sophisticated online tools, but also of a properly trained single point person who can negotiate with buyers, deal with solicitors, chase up chains and attend to the many, many other aspects of completing a sale.
Estate agents... don't get too comfortable:
The old style traditional estate agent is similarly in danger of going the way of high street travel agents. The costs of running a branch network have to be passed on to customers, and the lack of investment in online tools by the vast majority of these agencies has left them unresponsive to customer demands in an online world. The future is not bricks and mortar (and logoed cars and flashy suits) any more than it is ‘sell it yourself'.
Unsurprisingly, according Etches, the future's bright, the future's, er, Brightsale... a low-cost, alternative estate agency model, operating online and out of a Manchester call-centre, charging 0.5% (including legal fees). The Rat and Mouse has written about Brightsale before... and we've remained impressed with their forward-looking approach to the industry... a bit of Redfin-style lateral thinking and investment in more than online acreage. Whether Etches will be proved right remains to be seen.
Everybody wants a piece. Last year, it was Asda. Now, Bricks'n'Clicks appears to have the scoop on a plan by Tesco to enter the online, low cost estate agency market. Tesco themselves are refusing to comment, while the other larger property portals are apparently engaging in a strange mating ritual as they decide whether they want Tesco to pluck their listings or not.
According to a survey by Alliance & Leicester, private home-sellers using websites to market their properties are finding buyers in an average of less than two months, compared to more than three months via the more conventional estate agency route. The survey featured 2,384 people, 8% of whom had used on online private sales service, 5% had used a local paper, 4% had hand-crafted a "for sale" board and 1% had used eBay.
The Telegraph carried this interesting piece about Wow, an online agent with an offline presence. Wow will apparently only operate in neighbourhoods where they have a local agent who knows the local market and can view the property. It's not entirely clear from the website, but according to the Telegraph they've "branches" in west and south west London. They charge a flat fee of £899 (making them a viable alternative when selling a property worth £400,000 or more), and advertise on a host of larger portals, including Rightmove and Propertyfinder. So... a local agent with an online shopfront.
While Jon Hunt is busy reaching over the table, raking in the chips following his £390m sale of Foxtons, and calculating whether he can afford to make a bid for the Rat and Mouse, some of his peers and colleagues have been speaking with the Guardian's Rupert Jones and helping him build up a picture of one of the UK's richest men. It's a good piece... interestingly, Foxtons US appears to be having a few reputation problems; interesting too, Hunt was briefly an army gunner. More here.
Meanwhile - on the subject of Foxtons - here's an interesting blog post by a graphic designer, about why he thinks the Foxton's Mini is smarter than its four-wheeled rivals.
Exceptional Homes - it's a brand new internet agency charging a 1% commission, but limiting its list to homes valued at £1m and more (because, let's face it, 1% of more is... more). According to the press release, the company's financed by an ex-City broker who didn't feel he got a particularly good deal when he paid a high street agent £60,000 to sell his Kensington townhouse. So what will Exceptional Homes do for you? They'll get your property onto Primelocation, they'll provide a 3D walkthrough (hosted, a little disappointingly, on YouTube and then embedded in the EH page), they'll give you an online viewings calendar, do the usual agent viewings stuff and (this is more impressive) pay for a Google AdWords campaign. They clearly need time to do a bit of refining (their site could use a spelling and grammar swipe)... but - since their 1% assumes multi-agency representation - there's no good reason not to sign up.
... to BC Partners - a private equity group - for £390m, leaving Jon Hunt, personally, something just over £350m. Not bad for 26 years work. More here.
Here's an interesting segment on CBS's 60 Minutes about Internet estate agents Redfin and their battle with the conventional real estate agent lobby, which appears to be doing everything its power to shut them down. "Real estate is, for sure, the most screwed up industry in America," says Redfin's CEO. In the States, agents take a giant 6% commission. Redfin takes 3%, and gives two-thirds of that back to the buyer. But - later in the segment - we go on the road with one of those critical 6%ers... an agent from Remax. And, geez, does she work for her money... cleaning and preparing and staging the houses, personally leafletting the neighbourhood with individual ads for each new property she takes on. She's like Annette Bening in American Beauty. It's an interesting little film. Watch it here.
The Rat and Mouse has referred before to Lane Fox, Chelsea's Lulu Egerton's problems buying a new home. On Saturday, she wrote in detail about her ordeal for the Daily Telegraph.
Trying to buy at the moment is like being in a washing machine on spin cycle. Or haggling down in the souk on market day. I feel deranged at not being able to buy myself a home. I last bought and sold five years ago and remember the experience as an elegant and fine chain of events over nine months with no rush, no anxiety and no stress. This time round, I've been outbid in a sealed bid, won a sealed bid (only to have the vendor decide not to sell), lost a sealed bid, suffered gazumping, been too late, too poor and, worst of all, ignored because a vendor was "insulted" (I kid you not) when I raised my bid in increments of £50,000. Believe me, madam, while you live in solitary, tax-exile splendour in Monaco, I live in the real world where £50,000 here or there really matters.
Let's start a new week with a new website. Rogue Agents is the result of a traumatic buying/selling experience in London... therapy, and an attempt to make a difference. There's no advertising nor, says the founder, will there ever be. It's effectively a public-service directory of "scams", split into "buying a home", "selling a home" and "improving a home" categories. Users upload scams (gazumping and gazundering are classed as scams, interestingly, even though they're products of the system rather than an example of illegality), and other users comment on them and offer positive suggestions for anybody looking to avoid falling prey. There's a forum, and some articles and news, too. Right now - content's sparse (the site's new, after all) - and I suspect some people may be fooled by the domain into thinking it's going to be a name-and-shame site (or, perhaps, a very "upfront" estate agency). But it's certainly one to watch.
The Ombudsman has released figures for 2006 and it seems complaints rose by a third to 8,000... an unprecedented numbers. I don't have the figures to hand - and I'm rushing to leave for some meetings - but it would be interesting to compare trades in 2005 with trades in 2006, and see how many new agents joined the Ombudsman scheme, too. News sources are painting this as the people speaking against the agents... I'm not so sure.
... asks Rosalind Russell in the Telegraph, and she finds arguments both ways. Emailed particulars find favour with more and more agents, partly on environmental grounds, partly on cost. But what, asks John D Wood MD Peter Young, about the people who aren't computer-literate? The Rat and Mouse wouldn't worry. What are the chances of being able to afford a house of you're not computer literate? Russell's piece is a good read. I hadn't heard of potential buyers being charged for glossy particulars before:
Some were so lavish and thick - the brochures, that is - that a hefty charge was demanded to discourage curious, but poor people from requesting one.
Either I've been looking in the wrong price bracket, or I just have that air about me that screams man of means. I wonder which it is.
Okay, first of all, it's the 21st Century, and we're too evolved - for good or bad - to be embarrassed about debt... it's no longer a moral issue. I'm aware of that. However, what does a London estate agent have to gain from identifying herself and blabbing this to Reuters?
Angie Liston, a real estate agent and first-time pawner who received 400 pounds against a gold necklace and her husband's watch, said she was surprised by how efficient the process was. "(Getting the money) was very easy to do and it was better than standing all day queuing at the bank," she said when leaving a north London pawnshop. "This will sort out some extra bills we have and I'm sure we'll give it another go come the time."
Even a broker herself - simply commenting, later in the piece, about movements in the gold market - refuses to give her name. And I'm pretty confident that - even if I was caught completely and utterly by surprise by the pushiest reporter in all of Reuters, while actually leaving a pawnbrokers, minus my trousers, my right hand clutching a tenner - I'd deny all knowledge of the place. I wouldn't give my name and talk about how much I got for my cargoes... and how I'm so saddled with debt I'm going to return later and offer them my underpants.
The piece, written from an American perspective, first identifies the UK as a country "saturated in debt" with "insolvencies... running at record levels", and then attempts to link this to a piece following the growth of the "upmarket" pawnbroking sector.
"Over the last three to four years, we have noticed the amount of professionals coming into our stores increase," said marketing manager David Towse of pawnbrokers Harvey and Thompson.
I'm not convinced that anybody chooses a pawnbroker over a bank because the queues are shorter. Nor am I convinced that most people are as candid and happy about using a pawnbroker as our estate agent friend. The problem is that the kind of object pawnbrokers like... gold objects... are often the things we least like to part with, because they're the things traditionally imbued with sentimental value... gifts or things inherited. Here's how the feature ends:
Pawnbrokers suggest a newly-wed couple could pawn their gold rings to cover the cost of a honeymoon more easily than with a standard loan.
Nearly 20% of homeowners have said they would be tempted to put their house up for sale to test the market if they found that their neighbour’s property was getting a good price – even if they hadn’t previously thought about selling – according to a survey by the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA).
But - according to the NAEA - that's about to be a thing of the past. I'm afraid, it's all about HIPs again.
Peter Bolton King, Chief Executive of the NAEA, comments: “A significant percentage of sales that go through start with a seller 'testing the water'. The lack of ability to do this without paying for a HIP first is likely to put many sellers off. This will reduce the supply of houses available, cause the market to slow down and lead to additional house price inflation. Both these factors could adversely affect the economy.
Shareholders in UK property agency Countrywide PLC have approved an improved offer from US private equity firm Apollo, ending the long-running takeover saga.
At an EGM this morning, shareholders gave the green light to Apollo's improved offer of 530 pence in cash and 0.16487 Rightmove PLC shares per Countrywide share, tabled yesterday after Countrywide received a tentative approach from a third party, believed to be private equity firm 3i.
It was great, thank you very much. Apparently, annual inflation in the London market reached 20.9%, reduced transaction volumes are just building up demand and prices, and the rental market is quietly booming, with landlords taking advantage of a lack of properties to push up rents and repair yields damaged by rising interest rates. Which led to big smiles all round, especially from Neil Chegwidden (pictured).
Properties coming on to the market are being snapped up within a matter of days, sometimes hours, and buyers are finding it increasingly difficult to secure their first choice of property.
That's Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward MD Lee Watts on the February market. The rest... the number of buyers per property is up 58% on February 2006, the number of properties for sale is down 39% on February 2006.
Because a lot of people still don't seem to know. This, from an interesting thread over at the Channel 4 4homes forum:
We have found that the estate agent often acts in the best interests of the buyer and themselves - rather than the seller (who is the one paying their wages).
No, no, no, no, no. The estate agent is always employed, acts for and is eventually paid by the vendor. And although it's much easier to direct frustrations directly at the agent, if they're doing their job their behaviour just reflects the wishes of the person whose property they're selling. Were they to start acting in anybody else's best interests... now that would be a problem.
No, not a firm of solicitors, but John D Wood, Fulham estate agent Anne Sutry's appraisal of the current cut-throat market in a fascinating Sunday Telegraph piece. It describes a market so oversubscribed that gazumping's the equivalent of a handshake. Now, there are two new evils for buyers to contend with. Sealed bids have filtered down to the more modest end of the market. And this:
Once a house goes on to an estate agent's books its details are sent to a select band of serious registered buyers. The agent sets a date for the house to be viewed and each prospective buyer gets a 20- or 30-minute slot to see the property on that day. Then it's a free-for-all.
it's called a "private treaty", and it has the potential for ugliness. Sobering too is the description of Lane Fox, Chelsea's Lulu Egerton, a highly experienced agent often quoted by the Rat and Mouse, as she sold and bought her house. Bidding wildly above asking price, she ended up feeling "deranged" by the experience, and suggests all agents should move house once every five years so they can understand their clients better.
The Times reports that venture capital group 3i (who recently missed out on Countrywide) will today place a first round bid for Foxtons. There's also gossip that Savills were recently interested. However Savills apparently valued the firm at just £80m... way below the £400m valuation currently on the table. More here.
I know that you were not gloating about the Foxtons Mini... but you really should be careful... you never know what you can find in your parking lot... or just send this to all those real estate kids at Foxtons and say you can feel the pain... you've been there in a better ride.
It wasn't my BMW. But I can confirm it was one of the Rat and Mouse fleet (Belgravia office). I'm still trying to get to grips with the whole story, but I believe the car had been lent to an estate agent.
A very long time ago, in January 2005, the Rat and Mouse published a photograph of a totaled Foxtons Mini. We weren't gloating, but we were intrigued by the details of how a Sloane Street branch car had ended up rolled in the middle of the Dorset countryside, and how the resulting photograph had become the subject of a popular email, sent from London estate agent to London estate agent. Foxtons remained tight-lipped... and we assumed (still assume) that the car had been pinched and wrecked. We were flooded with emails - most of them unprintable in their Foxtons-rage. Regular readers will know that the Rat and Mouse treads a careful path on the subject of estate agents. We respect and feel and a certain amount of sympathy for the good agents, the London property market foot soldiers, of whom there are many, even though that doesn't always play nicely with our readers. Out of a packed emailbag, we printed one response (which - I can now reveal - actually came from an estate agent). Anyway - cut to this afternoon - and this comment:
I cannot quantify the disgust I feel at this picture and the reaction. You people think car crashes are funny? You people would want an agent to crash his car and hurt himself? You think that your property experiences mean you can joke about young people getting hurt in car accidents? I'm afraid I take this very personally. Good bye Rat and Mouse.
For a (very) brief moment, it made me feel like the bad guy. Now I've reviewed the two posts, I've regained my real estate fu. But I do think the comment deserves being read, which is why I've posted it below the original post, and dragged it from the bowels of the Rat and Mouse up to the front page.
23.2.07 UPDATE - THERE'S BEEN FURTHER ACTION IN THE COMMENT SECTION - GO HERE FOR THE LATEST
Real life stories of estate agents abusing their power, including a cheeky agent who used his client's luxury penthouse flat to entertain girls, claiming it was his own, and another who helped stage an exorcism in order to sell a house. Estate agents reveal how they know where your most personal possessions are kept, and talk about some of the compromising positions they've founds their clients in. Plus, we let you in on the secret code that estate agents use to get you to part with your cash.
It seems like only - well, last October 30 - when the Telegraph looked at ways of selling your home privately, taking advantage of private sales websites such as The Little House Company and House Ladder to avoid estate agency fees. So it's about time, I guess, for another Telegraph feature about ways of selling your home privately, taking adva
We were meeting lots of vendors who were very keen to sell through our property buying business, SecureASale.co.uk. However, many of them still wanted to hold out for the best possible offer and were having little luck on the open market. We ended up giving free advice on how to improve their chances of selling their property and one lady who lived 200 miles from her vacant flat, asked us to manage her sale for her, hence the birth of PropertySressRelief.co.uk
An odd time to launch an estate agency, you might think, but 
As we can't be both an on-line estate agent and private seller we reluctantly have to suspend the private seller service launched earlier in the year. We will however continue to use Tesco Property Market to provide advice and support to home movers, as well as offering great value products including mortgages, insurance, conveyancing and HIPs.
Do any of you use 
It was great, thank you very much. Apparently, annual inflation in the London market reached 20.9%, reduced transaction volumes are just building up demand and prices, and the rental market is quietly booming, with landlords taking advantage of a lack of properties to push up rents and repair yields damaged by rising interest rates. Which led to big smiles all round, especially from Neil Chegwidden (pictured).
A very long time ago, in January 2005, the Rat and Mouse published 
