If you are thinking of buying, selling or renting a property, your first thought is probably to use one of the traditional high street estate agents. After all, that’s what people do, right? However, there are a number of benefits of online estate agents that might just change your thinking.
Historically, properties were advertised for sale by an estate agent with premises on a local high street. Buyers and Landlords would visit the various different agents and check the local newspaper to try and find the property of their dreams.
Today, the internet has changed everything. With property portals such as Rightmove and Zoopla, people no longer contact every estate agent to check properties for sale. Instead, with one simple search, they can find all the properties available in their chosen area, day or night. This has led to the invention of the ‘online estate agent’.
Benefits Of Online Estate Agents:
An online estate agent does not have offices on every high street, instead, they conduct most of their activities online. And, that means they don’t have to restrict themselves to a small geographical area and instead, spread out on a national scale. All of this leads to some significant benefits of online estate agents that we are about to reveal to you now.
1) Save Money
It’s significantly cheaper to use online estate agents. Most high street agents will charge you a percentage of your property sale or yearly rental price. This will typically be around 3% on a sale or 10-15% on a year of your rental income, which, on a property priced at £250,000, works out to be a fee of £7500, and in rental varies depending on the location and size of the property.
The main issue with this ‘percentage of sale or rent’ pricing model is that property prices have risen dramatically over the past few decades, yet, the percentage fee charges have been slow to fall. This means high street agents are charging much more for doing the same, or arguably less (thanks to the internet), work.
The cost-benefits of online estate agents include that they tend to charge a fixed-fee, rather than a percentage of the sale or rent. That fee is fixed for everyone, so you won’t pay more just because your property has a higher value.
With the average cost of a selling through an online agent coming in at around £1399, you could save thousands by using an online estate agent.
2) List Your Property For Sale Faster
One major bugbear of people who choose to use traditional high street agents is the amount of time it takes to make any progress. Getting your property live can seem to take forever. First, there is the valuation, then they return to take photos and create a floorplan (often performed by different people). Finally, your listing goes live, but not before various marketing brochures and information have been produced.
Online estate agents are renowned for being able to get your property on the market within 24 hours of valuing your property. This is because they tend to conduct the valuation, take photographs, and create the floorplans all on the same visit. Because they only list your property online, they don’t need to waste time creating marketing brochures for your property.
3) More Control Over Your Property Listing
With traditional high street agents, if you notice a mistake on your property listing, you’ll have to call the estate agent and ask them to change it. This is a problem if you spot the mistake at 5:10pm on a Saturday as you’ll have to wait until the estate agents re-open on Monday morning before you can call. Even then, you could be waiting days for someone to actually make the change required.
No more waiting for the estate agents to open, no more chasing them to make the changes you asked for days ago. You can do it all at the click of a button or by email. Plus, if you need help, online agents often keep their support centres open until late into the evening, 7 days a week.
4) Viewings On Your Terms
If you have previously sold or Let a property through a traditional high street estate agent, you may have felt under pressure when it comes to viewings. They’ll often ask you to perform viewings yourself out of their normal office hours. And, sometimes, they’ll want to perform viewings themselves at times that do not suit you.
This has been overcome by online estate agents since most will allow you to just sit back while there on hand selection of flexible agents conduct viewings well out of traditional office hours. This is basically means more time for you to tend to other more relaxing duties.
Because viewings can be arranged online 24/7, prospective landlords, buyers or tenants reap the benefits of online estate agents too.
5) Communicate Directly us via email or phone
Another common complaint about traditional high street agents is that, once a sale or rent is progressing, the seller/landlord spends half their time chasing the estate agent for updates on the progression of the sale or tenant referencing.
Online estate agents help to significantly speed up the process . You’ll still get a dedicated agent to help keep you up to date and keep your sale on track, this often leads to a quicker, smoother, and less stressful sale
So stop wasting time and money to paying the high street agents offices rising light, heating and running cost bills, be smart and choose the easy way with us here at Mysize Myplace.