Property Matters: The Disappearing Local Estate Agent

There was a time when choosing an estate agent usually meant walking down your local high street. You knew the names above the doors, recognised some of the people behind the desks and probably knew somebody who had bought or sold through them.

Today, things look rather different.

Most of us begin our property search online. We can look at hundreds of homes without speaking to an estate agent, compare asking prices, check previous sales and even get an estimated valuation without leaving the sofa.

Technology has undoubtedly made property more accessible. Yet somewhere along the way, have we started to lose something that actually matters?

Local knowledge.

A database can tell you what a house sold for. It cannot always tell you why.

Two apparently similar three-bedroom houses half a mile apart can have very different values. One might fall into a particularly popular school catchment. Another might sit on a road buyers desperately want to live on. Move a few streets further and demand can change again.

A good local estate agent knows these things because they experience the market every day.

They know which houses attracted several offers and which struggled. They know what buyers are currently asking for. More importantly, they may already know the people who are waiting for exactly the type of property that has just come onto their books.

That is very different from simply putting a property onto Rightmove and waiting for somebody to click on it.
And perhaps that gives us the real question for this week's Property Matters:

If every estate agent can advertise your property on the same major portals, what are you actually paying your estate agent for?

Surely the answer should be expertise, relationships and knowledge.

This isn't an argument that national chains are bad and independent agents are good. Some national agencies have excellent branches staffed by people who have lived and worked locally for years. Equally, having the word "local" above the door doesn't automatically make somebody an expert.

What matters is whether the person advising you genuinely understands the market in which your property sits.
That becomes particularly important when it comes to valuation.

Technology can produce an estimate in seconds. Yet a valuation isn't simply a calculation based upon bedrooms, bathrooms and previous sales. A house is worth what somebody is prepared to pay for it, and understanding those buyers is where local experience becomes invaluable.

Then there is everything that happens after the board changes to SOLD STC.

Anyone who works in property knows that agreeing a sale is only the beginning.

Chains wobble. Surveys uncover problems. Mortgage offers are delayed. Searches raise questions. Buyers become nervous and sellers become frustrated.

A local agent who has spent years building relationships with conveyancers, mortgage brokers, surveyors, search professionals and other agents can sometimes pick up the telephone and find out what is actually happening.
That human network has value.

There is a familiar theme here for those of us involved in property searches as well. Technology can process enormous amounts of information very quickly, and that should be welcomed. The danger comes when we start believing that access to information is the same thing as understanding it.

Sometimes you need somebody who actually knows the place.

So perhaps the local estate agent isn't disappearing because we no longer need local knowledge. Perhaps we have simply become so used to technology that we have forgotten how valuable that knowledge can be.

This Tuesday on Property Matters, Gareth Wax and Hamish McLay will be joined by Rowan Waller as we ask what has happened to the traditional local estate agent and whether genuine local expertise still has a place in today's increasingly digital property market.

We certainly think it does.

Join us live on Tuesday at 1pm and tell us what you think.

Do you still value an estate agent who knows your town, your road and your local market, or has technology made that knowledge less important?

Watch live or catch up afterwards:
https://www.youtube.com/@SpillingTheProper-Tea

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