Well-known London agent Ed Mead has offered a journalist the chance to be an estate agent for a few days - just to see how difficult the job actually is.
Harry Mount, writing in the Spectator two weeks ago, championed the cause of online agents, saying: Whatever you think about the internet, it does bring one great benefit to mankind the gradual death of the old-fashioned estate agent.
Mount went on to say that the current 5.5 per cent of homes sold through online agents will rise to 50 per cent as soon as 2018 and to as much as 70 per cent by 2020. Why pay someone £20,000 to sell a million-pound house in London but £2,000 to sell you a similar £100,000 house in Burnley he asked.
It's not like you're paying for much expertise no qualifications are needed to become an estate agent. You could set yourself up as one tomorrow. They're certainly no better at valuing your house than you are. Thanks to the internet, I have an encyclopaedic knowledge of house prices in my street over the past decade Mount goes on.
Now Ed Mead, executive director of south west London agency Douglas & Gordon, has hit back in characteristically combative style.
In this week's edition of the Spectator he writes that despite a mature internet, as I write a mere 10,000 of the 760,000 properties on the market are for sale through online agents.
He continues: Finding a buyer is merely 20 per cent of the work, with the internet simply providing a bigger shop window. It doesn't do the remaining 80 per cent getting the money actually into the seller's pocket which is what you pay your fee for.
Mead, whose media appearances in recent weeks suggest he has become the de facto leader of the campaign against online agents, then makes a spectacular offer to Harry Mount.
If Mr Mount thinks it's easy, then I'm very happy to offer him a seat for a few days to experience it. So will the Spectator writer - also a frequent contributor to the Telegraph - take up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
We wait and see. In the meantime, Mead's letter ends with a proud defence of the traditional estate agent: Be careful what you wish for. The internet provides many things, but a personal service is not one of them.
Comments
Good on Ed Mead! If more people saw the hard work that estate agents do and the expenses we have to cover - the reason we have fees - maybe we wouldn't get such bad press!
EMoov even.
Arr EMove, how predictable you would arrive on this thread. Your comments are generalisations in the extreme. Are you suggesting all online agents provide great service, and better than a high street agent would I hope not.
That is no more a myth than the myth you spread that customers can save money via an online agent. Assumption again.
Is the internet no more than a newspaper When there was no internet, apparently all we had to do was put up a board and put an advert in the newspaper and the house sold itself. Why then as a high street office and given that we too have adopted this new fangled internet thingy, do i need a payroll of several hundred thousand pounds a year for my offices.
On line agents make too much of saying all they need to do is put it on the internet and not enough shoes on the street.
It is a hard slog and will probably become harder over the next few months, but online advocates have predicted the death of high street shops for 10 to 15 years and the big names are still there, but with an online presence as well. As long as traditional estate agents continue to do a good job (some do, some do not!), there will always be a strong presence on the high street.
Sounds like it's Ed Mead that needs to spend the day in the offices of an online agent so that he can experience the reality of personal service. That would help dispel this silly myth that online agents don't provide great service. A glance at any review website tells it as it is. Online agents simply provide a far better customer experience than the high street.
Great idea Ed. Next we could have estate agents spending a day in a conveyancers office
In the words of a fictional lawyer (Atticus Finch): "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.