Ray Bohringer: Blog

Wednesday 27th July 2011

What a week! I spent two days out and about in Hertfordshire, seeing a variety of agents introducing our mortgage proposition for estate agents, followed by presentations in Bromley, Brixton, Ilford and North London, and finishing up with a pro-am golf tournament to finish the week at a fantastic course.

Calling on estate agents is relatively new to me, as my previous sales activity was focused on mortgage brokers.

What can I tell you about  agents from these calls and meetings? Well to start with, you are a chipper bunch! Very accommodating and genuinely interested in our proposition, whether you are happy with your current mortgage offering or not.

Whether this is because you are delighted to see somebody walking into the branch at the moment,  or that you are genuinely pleased to see me, I'm not sure. Whatever the reason it's very refreshing!

 From my travels it seems that agents tend to fall into two categories: there are those that still adopt the 'old school' approach to business where nothing much has changed for many years apart from the introduction of on-line sales, and those that have fully taken on board all aspects of modern day technology. But who's right?

My opinion is that  both have their merits. I love the atmosphere in the old style office (if not the pompousity of some old timers!) where you get the feeling of total professionalism and years of experience.

However, I can also relate to the more modern approach where all properties are displayed via a 'walk round' on screen and negotiators don’t  leave the office without their iPads.

However, whether new or traditional, the vast majority of agents are very good at what they do. It seems to me that in many cases the public are keen to criticise a trade or profession without digging deep enough into the value of years of experience and the hard work that goes into making a difficult job look easy - as I have experienced myself just recently when I sold an investment property through a local agent (Anthony Riley @ Essex Countryside) .

Two things happened. First, I got a much higher price than I thought I would, and secondly it was sold within three days. Was the deal worth the fee? You bet it was!

Ray Bohringer is director of Obligo